Nostalgic Depression?
Good News for the Sad, the Regretful, and the Weary
Pondering happy memories often evokes feelings of joy. Maybe the aroma of freshly baked rolls transports you back to your Grandma’s house on Thanksgiving day. Or maybe that song from your senior year of high school comes through the radio and all the years between now and then melt away as you remember good friends and fun times.
Like I said, these are often enjoyable experiences. But have happy memories ever left you feeling sad? Or full of regret? Or just plain weary when compared to the difficulties you face in the here-and-now?
There’s actually a term for it. It’s called nostalgic depression.
While not to be confused with diagnosable forms of depression, it’s simply a popular way of describing how happy memories of the past can fuel our discontent with present circumstances. Sometimes devastatingly so. The more nostalgia you experience in light of your current difficulties, the more you can spiral into believing that you’ll never be that happy again. Those were the good ol’ days, you tell yourself. And they’ll never be here again.
It becomes sort of cyclical in nature. Feelings of nostalgia create dissatisfaction with your present reality. And it’s those unpleasant feelings which cause you to reach back to times that you believe were happier. And when you think about those times, the dissatisfaction grows all the more.
So how do we overcome nostalgic depression? Secular advice is two-fold. First, we need to remember that we tend to view the past with rose-colored glasses when we’re not happy with our lives currently. Chances are that as happy as those days were, there were likely other aspects which were also difficult. Second, we need to really examine what is good in our lives presently and take pleasure in the small joys of life.
I actually don’t think this is bad advice. But I do believe that for us who are in Christ, the great doctrines of our faith give us a deeper well for understanding our past, being thankful in our present, and filling us with hope for our future.
For the Christian in the throes of nostalgic depression, I think the answer for overcoming lies in doing some recalibrating. The truth is, we tend to overestimate how happy our past was and underestimate how happy our future will be. And in doing so, we become blind to our present blessings as well.
For the remainder of this article, then, I want to consider each one of these and then tease out how the rich truths from the Gospel can help us to recalibrate them.
Overestimating the Happiness of the Past
The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” — Exodus 16:3
Has that passage ever struck you as weird? It has me. The LORD graciously saved the Israelites from enslavement and hard labor in Egypt. But while on their way to the promised land, things got hard. And in light of those difficulties, Egypt seemed a whole lot better than what they were currently facing. Nostalgic depression can do that. It can cause us to think that in the past all was right with the world. Granted, our past likely doesn’t include things as hard as Egyptian slavery. And additionally, it is right and good to feel gratitude when we think back to good times and enjoyable seasons. But where we get into trouble is when we idealize the past like the Israelites. Because the truth is, we know that no matter how good it seems here, the whole creation, and our very selves, is shot through with sin (Rom. 3:1-23; 8:21-22). And if you thought long enough and hard enough about those “good ol’ days”, I promise that you’d also be able to recall times of hurt and sadness and brokenness that occurred in them too.
And reckoning with this is actually a key part of being able to thank the Lord for happy memories without idolizing them. When we remember the reality of sin, we guard our hearts from overestimating the happiness of our past.
At the same time, have a deep understanding of the doctrine of sin is also what helps us to loosen our grip on the past so that we can look toward a brighter hope for our future which has been secured by Christ Himself.
Underestimating the Happiness of the Future
When your difficult circumstances in the present propel you toward finding comfort in your past, it can take your mind off of what awaits you in the future. And that’s a recipe for sustained misery and discontent.
The way to navigate difficult times is actually by looking 2,000 years beyond our past to the cross of Christ. And what is it that we see there? We see Christ paying the full penalty for our sin so that we can live our lives in the certain hope of future resurrection (1 Cor. 15).
So what is your future if you are a Christian? Paul says in Romans 8:18 that it’s going to be so overwhelmingly glorious that it’s not even fair to compare it to our present sufferings.
What awaits us is a world of love called heaven.1
In our very near future, brothers and sisters, is the warm embrace of our God who has kept all of our tears in His bottle (Ps. 56:8) and who will one day gently wipe away from our face the ones that remain (Rev. 21:1-4).
One theologian described what awaits us this way:
there is total shalom: a sense of sheer well-being. Every need is met. Every longing is fulfilled. Every goal is achieved. Every sense is satisfied. We see Him. We are with Him. He holds us and hugs us and whispers, “This is for ever.”2
Imagine what it would look like if you really believed this was true of you and then consider this: if you are trusting in Christ alone for your salvation, then it is true of you!
Blind to Present Blessings
It’s funny how this works. When we are preoccupied with our past, it usually churns up the waves of our discontentment. The result is often despair and apathy and irritability.
But when we are preoccupied with our future with Christ, it kindles into bright flame a life characterized by peace and patience and gentleness. So let the truth of your future in Christ burn like kindling in your heart. Each day, stare into the cross of Christ until you see your way clear to the breathtaking future realities it points us to. And when you do, I promise you’ll notice a growing sense of contentment in your own life. A contentment that doesn't ignore the very real difficulties, but isn’t paralyzed by them either.
13 Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.
— 1 Peter 1:13 (emphasis mine)
Jonathan Edwards, Heaven is a World of Love (Crossway, 2020).