Nostalgia - What lives down Memory Lane

Nostalgia. It's a beautiful soft, sepia-coloured word, isn't it? Comforting, cushioned and universally understood, although in terms of nuance, it punches way above its weight.

Unlike terms that refer directly to longing, or regret, nostalgia isn't really about wanting to return to the past, or somehow have the past return to us, but much more subtly, it suggests a profound and meaningful gratitude that the past actually happened at all.

Nostalgia has inherently soft edges. It conjures yearbooks, songs and often smells that are kind and considerate vehicles, transporting us instantly back to another time. Moments that we perceive not necessarily as better, but certainly our mostly happy places. Nostalgia can actually stop us in our tracks, such are the magnets of good memories.

Oddly, even though we speak of nostalgia as a gentle, sentimental glance over our shoulder, it didn't begin life with quite such emotional tenderness.

Nostalgia comes from two Greek words: nostos, meaning "to return home", and algos, meaning "pain" or "suffering" - and was quite literally "the pain of wanting to go home."

In fact, when the term was first coined in 1688 by a bearded, Swiss doctor by the name of Johannes Hofer, it was considered a genuine illness. Soldiers serving King, Queen or Country - often far from home - were said to suffer from it. They became suddenly withdrawn, lost their appetites, struggled to sleep and, in some cases, were believed to have died from the profound ache of homesickness. What an awfully sad way to go...

We, the people, have a habit of softening the original meanings of words. There was a time when naughty was downright evil (to have no or naught sense of Christian morality) and a time when gay meant happy - which it still kind of does, in so many ways.

Same with nostalgia. We have wrapped it in faded, old newspapers and gentled it to describe the fondest of our recollections. But the intended sense of the word knows something we have long forgotten. The ache of nostalgia is rarely about a place we once lived or Grandma's oatmeal cookies. It's about a feeling. A season. A person.

It is reaching for a fondly remembered version, of ourselves.

The Japanese have a phrase for this: mono no awa-re — which refers to the inherent pathos of things. One of the reasons I love Japanese culture (and also eating my bodyweight in Sushi). They have terms that dance around being defined - for things that so beautifully occupy the negative space. The invisible words between the written lines.

For the Japanese, the feelings around nostalgia describe a very particular ache of knowing something beautiful is already passing, even as you stand inside it. It is so darn "present moment"... The blink-and-you'll-miss-it cherry blossom season, is loved not despite its brevity, but exactly because of it. Its perfection is inseparable from its fragility. Mono no awa-re is, in a sense, nostalgia practised in the now. Consider that for a sec... the capacity to long for something while it is still here... to feel the preciousness of the present tense before it becomes the past. That, I think, is just pure grace. We should frame it.

I think most of us will be happy around our learned understanding of the established, Western meaning. A feeling of warmth for what was, and just for a few minutes, allowing that memory to live quietly inside us.

And perhaps that is the real ache of it. Not the place. Not even the people, though I really miss my Mum. But the version of me that existed inside that moment - the me who didn't yet know how things would turn out. The me who hadn't yet made the decisions, the horrendous mistakes, the compromises, the sell-out of self. That version of me, caught in the sunscreen and chlorine of a particular summer, or gulping down the aromas from a particular kitchen, is the thing that nostalgia is really asking us to reach for.

So when we think with a bit more zen, and without needing to slip into a Kimono, we can actually see that the meal is perfect because it ends. The holiday is golden because it becomes a memory. Nostalgia really does get this instinctively, even when we don't.

It is the memory equivalent of valet parking. Unhurried and without fanfare or flap, it arrives to remind us that we were there. That we were present for something worth remembering. And that, quietly, is an extraordinary thing.

We live in a culture that seems perpetually to be leaning forward. Always optimising, upgrading and "We're walking...". Nostalgia is the gentle hand on the shoulder that turns us - not spins us - around, just for a moment, and whispers: "Oi... look what you had. Look what you used to be." Not to make you sad, but to make you grateful.

Because here is what nostalgia knows that we keep forgetting: the past is not a place of loss. It is a place of evidence. Evidence that you loved, that you laughed, that you showed up for your own life in ways that left a mark deep enough to ache for.

The pain, it turns out, was not always the point.

The point, all along, was gratitude.

On Platform 13, wholeness isn’t found - it’s remembered. Because loss is loss, worthiness is universal, and no one is alone. We are all in this together.