Why Nostalgia Is a Sign to Reconnect With Your Playful Self
Updated: 2 hours ago
There is something strange about nostalgia.
It comes and goes, often without warning, carrying with it an almost instinctive yearning for a younger version of ourselves—or perhaps simply for a different way of experiencing the world.
Simpler times.
Or at least, simpler as we remember them.
A song comes on, a familiar smell passes through the air, or an old photograph appears unexpectedly, and suddenly we find ourselves somewhere else. We remember summer evenings, school vacations, childhood bedrooms, old friendships, family gatherings, or perhaps simply the feeling of having nowhere particular to be.
For a moment, the present quiets down enough for something from the past to make itself known.
Maybe that is part of why nostalgia can feel so powerful.
We are living through an extraordinary volume of information, images, advertisements, opinions, entertainment, and opportunities to consume. There is almost always something asking for our attention. We can watch, listen, compare, purchase, learn, respond, document, and share without ever reaching the natural end of the experience.
Our attention is repeatedly pulled outward, often before we have even had the opportunity to decide where we would like it to go.
Nostalgia offers something different.
It turns our attention inward.
Research suggests that nostalgia is more complicated than simply wishing the past had been better. Sedikides et al. (2016) found that nostalgic reflection can strengthen self-continuity, the sense of a meaningful connection between who we were and who we are now. Their research also suggests that nostalgia can strengthen social connectedness, which can contribute to a greater sense of continuity and psychological well-being.
Perhaps this is part of nostalgia's appeal. We catch glimpses of ourselves as we once were and recognize qualities we may still want to carry forward.
In that sense, nostalgia can act almost like a bridge.
It reminds us that our past experiences haven't simply disappeared. They have become part of the person we are. Looking backward does not necessarily mean wanting to return. Sometimes it simply means recognizing something worth carrying into the present.
Something human.
We Are Animals, After All...
The word animal can feel strangely uncomfortable when applied to ourselves.
For much of human history, we have made great efforts to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the natural world—to elevate ourselves above it, and perhaps even above the other forms of life that surround us. We build cities, develop technologies, establish institutions, write philosophies, produce art, and send machines into space. Our capacity for language, abstraction, culture, and technological development can make it tempting to think of humanity as somehow separate from the rest of life.
But we are animals.
Homo sapiens sapiens emerged roughly 300,000 years ago, which is close to nothing when considered against the immense history of life on Earth. We are comparatively recent inhabitants of an ancient planet that has witnessed the rise and extinction of countless species. And yet, we have developed remarkably sophisticated ways of convincing ourselves that we exist outside of nature—or perhaps even that our intellect gives us the ability to control it.
Modern Western thought has often emphasized our capacity for reason, logic, and control. These qualities have undoubtedly shaped much of what makes human life extraordinary.
But they can also make it easy to forget something more fundamental...
We are living organisms.
We have bodies that require sleep, movement, nourishment, touch, recovery, social connection, stimulation, and periods of stillness. We experience emotion through those bodies. We remember through them.
We become tired through them, excited through them, anxious through them, comforted through them, and connected through them. Our bodies are not simply vessels carrying us through life; they are part of how we experience and make sense of it.
(This relationship between the body, memory, and emotional experience is something I hope to explore more deeply in a future article, inspired in part by The Body Keeps the Score and its discussion of trauma and the ways difficult experiences can continue to live within the body.)
Melanie Challenger explores this tension in How to Be Animal (2020), a book concerned with our relationship to other animals and with the uncomfortable reality that we are animals too. Challenger defies the tendency to separate human intelligence from our embodied existence and asks what might happen if we took our animal nature more seriously.
There is something comforting about this perspective.
Remembering that we are animals does not make us less intelligent or any less human. Instead, it reminds us that our intellectual lives are deeply rooted in our physical bodies and lived experiences. We are not minds floating above the physical world, separate from it. We think, feel, perceive, and understand through our bodies—and our embodied experience is inseparable from who we are.
We are organisms that think, feel, remember, desire, imagine, move, rest, and connect.
And perhaps this is where nostalgia becomes particularly interesting.
When we look backward, we are often remembering experiences that were less concerned with productivity and more concerned with simply being there. With enjoying ourselves in the present moment.
What Are We Actually Nostalgic For?
When we say, “I miss being a kid,”are we really saying we want to be children again?
Probably not.
Childhood was not perfect, and neither was the past. Nostalgia can soften difficult memories and illuminate the moments that feel particularly meaningful to us. We may remember a summer afternoon with extraordinary warmth while conveniently forgetting the boredom, arguments, insecurities, or disappointments that existed alongside it.
Yet the emotion itself can still tell us something.
Perhaps what we miss is not childhood, but the way we experienced the world.
As children, an ordinary afternoon could feel enormous. A cardboard box could become a spaceship, a blanket could become a fort, and an ordinary walk through the neighbourhood could transform into an expedition.
We could spend hours drawing, inventing stories, building things, climbing trees, or becoming completely absorbed in an activity that served no obvious practical purpose.
And perhaps that last part matters.
We did not always need our activities to be useful.
We could be curious without needing to turn our curiosity into expertise. We could create without immediately wondering whether what we made was good enough to show someone. We could move without calling it exercise. We could spend an afternoon doing something simply because it interested us.
As adults, usefulness can quietly become the measure by which we evaluate our time.
We start asking ourselves what we accomplished, what we produced, what we learned, whether something improved us, or whether our interests could eventually become useful in some other way.
The idea of earning a gold star follows us out of Miss Honey's classroom and into adulthood.
Eventually, the gold star may become a good grade, a promotion, a productive morning routine, a fitness goal, a completed project, or the approval of someone whose opinion we value.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things.
The problem begins when we are incapable of enjoying something unless it produces a result.
Exercise becomes something we track. Reading becomes another item on a self-improvement list. Travel becomes content. Hobbies become potential side businesses. Even rest can become something we optimize.
Leisure itself can begin to feel like another form of productivity.
Maybe what we need is not less ambition, but more opportunities to experience something for the simple love of experiencing it.
And this brings me to a question I find more interesting than : What do I miss about my childhood?”
What did I have access to then that I am missing now?
The answer may have little to do with age.
It might be curiosity. Freedom. Creativity. Community. Nature. Slowness. Spontaneity. The ability to become absorbed in something without thinking about what comes next.
Nostalgia is valuable precisely because it gives us clues.
Nostalgia and the Continuity of Self
This may help explain why nostalgia can feel bittersweet.
We are not only remembering a particular moment. We may also be remembering a version of ourselves that existed within that moment—a way of seeing, feeling, and experiencing the world that may no longer feel quite as accessible.
We are always changing, much like a river whose waters are never quite the same, even as the river remains. Perhaps we are like this too: constantly becoming, while still carrying something of who we have been.
Nostalgia may be one way those earlier versions of ourselves briefly come back into view.
“Sometimes, we look backward not because we want to return, but because we recognize something of ourselves there.”
Sedikides et al. (2016) found that nostalgia can foster self-continuity partly through social connectedness.
An old hobby might remind you that you once created things without worrying about whether they were impressive. An old birthday card might bring back the importance of a friendship that has long since faded. A photograph from a family trip might remind you of how deeply you once experienced belonging.
A particular song might bring back not only a person or a place, but a quality of yourself that seemed more accessible at that time.
The past becomes a kind of mirror.
Sometimes what we recognize in it is not a place we want to return to, but a part of ourselves that we have neglected.
Maybe that is why nostalgia can be useful. It gives us a language for noticing what has changed—and perhaps what we would like to change again.
The question becomes less “How do I get back there?” and more:
“What can I bring forward?”
Nostalgia Is Social
There is another important part of nostalgia that is easy to overlook: other people.
Many of our strongest memories are not solitary. We remember birthdays, family dinners, summer trips, friendships, school, neighbourhoods, celebrations, traditions, and ordinary evenings shared with people who mattered to us.
Even when the details become blurry, the feeling of belonging can remain remarkably vivid.
Juhl and Biskas (2023) describe nostalgia as a highly social emotion. Their review connects nostalgic reflection with social connectedness and suggests that nostalgia can contribute to experiences of meaning, self-continuity, optimism, inspiration, empathy, and prosocial behaviour.
This makes sense when we consider our own memories.
An old photograph can affect us more deeply than expected because we are not simply remembering what something looked like. We are remembering what it felt like to belong—to a particular group of people, a place, or a period of our lives.
This distinction feels particularly relevant at a time when communication has become incredibly easy, while meaningful connection can still feel surprisingly difficult.
We can communicate with almost anyone at any time. We can send a message in seconds, respond to a story, comment on a photograph, or watch someone’s life unfold from a screen.
But communication and connection are not necessarily the same thing.
Connection often requires presence, shared experience, vulnerability, attention, and time.
Perhaps the warmth we feel when looking back can remind us of that difference. Some of the experiences we miss may not have been meaningful because of what we were doing, but because of who we were with while we were doing it.
The Forgotten Importance of Play
Play is often treated as something we eventually outgrow.
Perhaps that is why it can feel strange to intentionally seek it out again as adults.
But play does not necessarily mean returning to childhood activities. It can be understood more broadly as a way of engaging with the world without requiring every experience to justify itself.
Keila Rose, through the Skinny Dipping Podcast by Keila Rose episode The Art of Play [...], explores play as something that can contribute to healing and extend beyond the individual.
I find this perspective particularly interesting because it challenges the assumption that play is merely an escape from the seriousness of life.
Instead, play can become a way of reconnecting with ourselves—our curiosity, spontaneity, pleasure, and capacity to experience something without needing it to produce a measurable result.
Maybe play can actually be a way of returning to ourselves.
It might be picking up one of those colouring books that seem to be everywhere again and allowing yourself to colour without trying to produce anything beautiful.
It might be taking photographs because the sunset caught your attention, wandering through a neighbourhood you have never explored, dancing in your kitchen, playing an instrument simply to hear what happens, cooking without following a recipe exactly, or making something with your hands without any intention of selling it.
The common thread is not the activity itself.
It is the relationship we have with the activity.
Are we doing it because we want to experience it, or because we have already decided what it needs to produce?
Maybe sometimes we can simply just do it.
(Thanks, Nike.)
Go for the walk. Pick up the camera. Colour the picture. Dance in the kitchen. Read the book. Make something with your hands. Follow the curiosity wherever it happens to lead—and then, instead of immediately asking what it accomplished, observe what happens.
That distinction can be surprisingly difficult to recognize.
We have been taught to associate time with value, and value with productivity. If an hour does not produce something measurable, we can begin to feel as though we have somehow wasted it.
Even our hobbies can become projects. Our interests can become goals. Our moments of rest can become opportunities for optimization.
But perhaps the value of an experience does not always need to be measured by what it produces.
Perhaps sometimes the experience itself is the point.
Perhaps We Don't Need to Go Back
Maybe the reason nostalgia can feel so powerful is that, underneath the memories, there is something very simple about remembering what it felt like to be alive.
We are animals, after all.
Before we were workers, consumers, students, professionals, parents, partners, creators, or anything else we have learned to call ourselves, we were—and still are—living organisms.
We have bodies that move, senses that notice, nervous systems that respond, and minds that make meaning from the experiences we have.
And animals do not spend their lives asking whether every moment is productive.
They explore.
They rest.
They play.
They seek connection.
They respond to curiosity.
They move toward what feels safe, nourishing, interesting, and alive.
Perhaps there is something worth remembering in that.
We have become very good at organizing our lives around what we *should* do. We pursue the degree, answer the email, reach the goal, improve ourselves, exercise, produce, achieve, and keep moving toward whatever comes next.
None of these things are inherently wrong. In fact, many of them can be deeply meaningful.
But a life cannot be measured only by what it produces.
There is also the question of what it feels like to live it.
What experiences make you feel present?
What makes you laugh without thinking about how you look?
What makes you lose track of time?
What leaves you feeling connected instead of depleted?
What makes you curious?
What makes you want to move, explore, create, rest, or simply, to sit somewhere beautiful for no particular reason?
Maybe these questions are more important than we give them credit for.
Living well is more than constructing a successful life from the outside. It is also about becoming attentive to the experiences that feel good, wholesome, meaningful, and genuinely ours.
This does not mean chasing pleasure at every moment or avoiding discomfort.
A wholesome life will still make space for grief, responsibility, uncertainty, discipline, boredom, and things we do not particularly enjoy.
Being alive is not about feeling good all the time.
It is about having enough room to feel fully alive.
Maybe nostalgia gives us glimpses of that room.
A childhood afternoon spent outside.
A song shared with a friend.
A family dinner that seemed ordinary at the time.
A hobby we abandoned.
The feeling of making something simply because we wanted to.
The freedom to wander without needing to know where we were going.
The past becomes a mirror—not because we are meant to live in it, but because sometimes it shows us what we have forgotten to carry forward.
That is what nostalgia is really offering us: not a reason to go back, but an opportunity to ask what deserves to come with us.
Maybe we can carry the curiosity of the child into the questions of the adult.
The playfulness into our work.
The wonder into our routines.
The willingness to wander into a life that has become overly planned.
The ability to rest without guilt.
The instinct to connect.
The permission to do something simply because it feels good to experience it.
Maybe we can stop asking every experience what it will give us and occasionally ask what it allows us to feel**.
Go for the walk.
Take the photograph.
Read the book.
Dance in your kitchen.
Call someone you love.
Sit beneath a tree.
Make something badly.
Make something beautiful.
Try something you have never tried before.
Do it without needing to turn it into a goal.
Then notice.
Notice how your body feels. Notice what holds your attention. Notice what makes you laugh. Notice what makes you feel grounded. Notice what leaves you wanting more—not because it is productive, impressive, or useful, but because some part of you feels more like itself afterward.
Perhaps this is one of the quiet lessons nostalgia can offer us.
We do not need to become children again.
We need to remember that we are still living beings—with bodies, instincts, relationships, curiosities, and a capacity for wonder.
And maybe a good life is not one in which we manage to accomplish everything we once imagined. Maybe it is one in which, along the way, we actually get to experience our own lives.
References
Challenger, M. (2020). How to be animal: A new history of what it means to be human. Canongate.
Hepper, E. G., & Dennis, A. (2023). From rosy past to happy and flourishing present: Nostalgia as a resource for hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. Current Opinion in Psychology, 49, 101547. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101547
Juhl, J., & Biskas, M. (2023). Nostalgia: An impactful social emotion. Current Opinion in Psychology, 49, 101545. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101545
Rose, K. (2026, April 21). The art of PLAY || Embrace the Sabrina Carpenter mindset [Audio podcast episode]. In Skinny Dipping. Spotify.
Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., Cheung, W.-Y., Routledge, C., Hepper, E. G., Arndt, J., Vail, K., Zhou, X., Brackstone, K., & Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M. (2016). Nostalgia fosters self-continuity: Uncovering the mechanism (social connectedness) and consequence (eudaimonic well-being). Emotion, 16(4), 524–539. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000136
Comments