Our generation seems to be obsessed with romanticizing a past we barely remember, or we didn’t even get to live. Y2k clothing trends. 2000’s music. Disney Channel. It’s almost as if we’ve applied a “beauty filter” to our own recollections.

However, I have to say that I stand by the fact that the youth is not the one and only victim of longing for the good old days.

Our flawed memory is a fascinating quality that defines us as humans. No matter how deeply the present moves, excites, or amazes us, it can never surpass that past to which we can never return.

Yet, at the same time, we are completely paradoxical beings. We live for recalling moments and thinking about how much we will miss the current ones. We feel an urgent need to record everything so that life doesn't slip through our fingers. We focus only on remembering and forget to live. Why are we like this?

Nostalgia, however, is a double-edged sword. It may seem to make our existence somewhat more miserable, as it goes hand in hand with discontent and melancholy, but in reality, it gives us a second chance to live. A second life. Just like the one you gave those jeans you found in a little thrift store. Jeans that, one day, were the favorite pair of a girl exactly like you; with your same fears, your same dreams, and your same desire to create memories.

The first opportunity that nostalgia gives us is one we insist on underestimating, by holding on to a carefully polished version of the past that now only lives in our dreams. The second is through our memories. Memories softened and distorted by a kind of magical haze. With a little touch of gloss here and there, we make them so glamorous that we forget it wasn’t all sunshine and roses.

When I started college and moved away from my hometown, I couldn't stop grieving the loss of my group of high school friends and the great time I’d had during my senior year. Hours of laughter, gossip, "firsts," and mutual support to get through everything. Oddly enough, I didn't find myself sighing with melancholy over the endless hours of studying. Nor over my hair falling out in clumps from the stress. Nor over the urge to throw up before every exam.

I have to admit that, often, this has made me feel incredibly alone. Am I the only person on the planet who feels totally unable to let go? But I only had to look around to realize we’re all in this together. Every day I see more digital cameras at parties, even though everyone has an iPhone. Lower and lower-rise pants are making a comeback. Even the T line is full of people wearing wired headphones. Isn’t 2026 the new 2016?

To be entirely honest, I think nostalgia makes us much more grateful than we realize. We don't know what we have until we lose it, that’s just how we are. But at least we know we had it. We know it existed. We know we lived it.

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