Nostalgia Is Not About the Past

In recent years, the world has been bringing old stories back.

Songs return as new covers.

Films and series get sequels decades later.

Games come back with another chapter.

You can explain it through industry logic.

But the scale suggests something else.

This isn’t just about the market. It’s about us.

The first time you encountered these stories, you felt something personal.

Maybe romance.

Maybe freedom.

Maybe drama.

Maybe a kind of anxiety you didn’t yet know how to name.

The experience was raw and private.

Unstructured. Sometimes contradictory.

And then years pass.

You return to the same songs, the same characters, the same worlds —

and something shifts.

Nostalgia doesn’t take you back.

It creates a point of comparison.

You look at who you were from a distance.

And suddenly you understand what you were only able to feel back then.

It isn’t pure happiness.

It isn’t pure loss either.

It’s a layered state — warmth mixed with a quiet sense of something gone.

But above all, it carries recognition: that time mattered.

And that recognition does something unexpected.

People who once experienced those stories in completely different ways

begin to feel something similar.

Not because the story changed.

But because you changed.

Experience reshapes perception.

This is especially true for those who grew up during transition.

You were told stability mattered.

And at the same time, you were told you could be anything.

You were given freedom of choice —

but no clear script for what to do with the consequences.

So when familiar stories return,

they illuminate the distance between who you were and who you are.

You’re not just revisiting a film or a song.

You’re encountering a former version of yourself.

And with distance comes clarity.

The version of you that once felt uncertain

no longer looks naïve.

It looks sincere.

What once felt like a mistake

can begin to resemble courage.

What once felt excessive

might reveal itself as identity.

That’s why the return of old stories resonates so deeply.

They don’t invite you to relive the past.

They allow you to reassemble yourself.

Sometimes what resurfaces isn’t the plot —

it’s a part of you that was set aside.

And when it appears again,

it doesn’t pull you backward.

It restores continuity.

You don’t want to become who you were.

You want to know that version of you didn’t disappear without a trace.

Maybe nostalgia isn’t about going back at all.

Maybe it’s about learning how to carry forward what was always yours.

Essay and photography by Jenny Hollyway.