Nostalgia and the Desire for the Infinite

A human being’s olfactory system is unique among the five senses in its particularly strong associations with the limbic system and the hippocampus- areas of the brain responsible for emotion and memory. This helps explain why a smell can instantly remind us of a moment in the past.
 
Recently, the whiff of Dial handsoap while washing my hands brought me back to when I was a feverish ten-year-old boy at the pediatrician’s office on a school day. I recall the wood of the doctor’s tongue depressor, the layout of the parking garage—even a treat at the building’s cafe. These details help evoke a memory in which I knew I was loved by my mom who brought me to the doctor’s office, and by my dad a few hours later who checked on me when he returned home from work. The memory is warm.
 
But there’s also the sting of nostalgia: The sweetness of the past can be recalled, but never recovered. Our response to such a moment of nostalgia is crucial. In his sermon, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis warns men against making their memories into “dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.” Our thoughts can live in such memories to the point where we see our present lives as less happy and less exciting than the past. One such example is Uncle Rico from the movie Napoleon Dynamite, who indulges memories of high school glory to ease the aching emptiness of his adult life. Some people do the opposite, suppressing altogether the memory of the “good ol’ days” in a way that denies the truth of our experience. We fluctuate between these two reactions, both of which are errors.
 
The key to mediating between these extremes is desire. In the same sermon, Lewis proposes that these memories are “good images of what we really desire...[but are] not the thing itself.” In a memory of spending time with friends, for example, I desire to be with those friends at that moment in my memory. But according to Lewis, these friends are merely the object of my memory, not the object of my desire; they are only a good image of what I desire. Therefore, my nostalgia-fueled desire will not be fulfilled by a futile attempt to reenact the past and reassemble my friends in just the same way.
 
Instead, my fulfillment will only be achieved if I recognize the proper source and object of my desire. I recognize the beauty in the memory, but I do not desire the beauty in itself. Rather, I desire that to which the beauty points: an infinite beauty and love that changes the present moment into one in which I recognize an ultimate longing. The nostalgia acts as a springboard by which I discover my desire for the Infinite God.
 
I thus do not reject my memories as simply sources of sadness and unfulfilled desire, but rather I examine the beauty of the remembered time and allow myself to desire its source. Such an exercise is a powerful reminder that I am made for God’s infinite goodness. We can do well to remind ourselves of this reality the next time nostalgia creeps.

Mr. Fairbanks is a 2nd pre-theology seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington.