How significant is the role of nostalgia in your life? Do you feel it very often? Does it affect decisions you make? Maybe you’re conscious and aware of the way it influences you. Or maybe nostalgia plays a much bigger role in your life and decisions than you realize, and once you understand how, your entire association with the past can be transformed.

Nostalgia is embedded in almost everything we consume—from movie reboots and sequels to fashion trends that cycle back every few decades, to the impossibility of scrolling through social media without seeing at least one post idealizing or romanticizing some version of the past. The past is constantly being repackaged and sold to us, whether we like it or not.

But it’s not just a corporate tool; nostalgia also fuels the way culture evolves. We see it in the romanticization of past decades, the yearning for pre-digital childhoods, and even in politics, where calls to “return to greatness” rely on an idealized version of history. The past, whether real or reimagined, holds a strange power over the present.

Even our ambitions can be dictated by nostalgia. We chase some dreams not because we truly want them now, but because they’re tied to an old version of ourselves. Nostalgia can inspire, of course, but it can also keep us stuck—trying to recreate or relive a version of the past instead of creating something new altogether.

Addiction, in many ways, is nostalgia in its most dangerous form.

At its core, addiction isn’t just about pleasure; it’s about the memory of pleasure. We don’t…

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Written by Ben Joshua