Merriam-Webster says this of the word:

nos·tal·gia

noun\nä-ˈstal-jə, nə- also nȯ-, nō-; nə-ˈstäl-\

: pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again

We all are familiar with the feeling of nostalgia. A snatch of song, a whiff of a particular scent, a turn in the road, a voice, flowers in bloom, rustle of paper… you name it, anything could trigger feelings of nostalgia, transport you back to a different time and place, leaving you yearning for things, people or situations that are now securely in the past, your past, or sometimes merely a version of your memories of that past.

It is a beautiful word, but has been hijacked and mangled beyond recognition by those for whom anything and everything about their own past is oh-so-gloriously beautiful. Magic it seems is finite, and they used it all up while they were growing up. Like, really? Actually I am fed up to here with this sort of extreme nostalgia-mongering. To me it sounds more like *nostalgia about nostalgia* than nostalgia itself. As a result, I have come up with a shailsim:

Nostalgia, is that which successfully keeps people bound to a past and their own memory of how things were, makes them blind to the good in the present, and effectively takes away the simple joy of living from their future. #shailism

Some of the M posts from A to Z Challenge worth checking:

M for Movies (all about dog-movies)

“Men-tality”

Magus (the Lost Wizard)

Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005)

©Shail Mohan 2014