Nostalgia is a word that hails from the Greeks: nostos, meaning “return home,” and “algos,” meaning pain. In fact, the “-algia” in nostalgia likens it to a weird medical symptom much like neuralgia and myalgia (though, I’ve never included ‘patient suffers from nostalgia’ in my one-liner). But, if nostalgia is an acute sort of homesickness, why does it happen before we’re already gone?
In MS4 year, there is time and space to experience more presently without being pulled in sixty different directions. As I look at pictures from MS1 GAPSA events and formal, I feel that pull of nostalgia even though I’m still here. Maybe nostalgia is the anticipation of pain, that preemptive pang of longing for the people and place of your present when you’re faced with an impending ending.
I’m not convinced, though, that nostalgia is necessarily pain. When I think back on my early medical school experiences, I feel a sense of pride and gratitude that comes with watching someone mature. Maybe nostalgia is a parent watching their child grow up: you treasure the growth that comes with the passage of time, but sometimes you want to freeze it or slow it down. Capture it and re-experience it just one more time. Nostalgia is a longing to manipulate something out of our control: time. It reminds us, especially in a profession where we seek to control the chaos of illness in our patients and reverse the effects of aging, that we’re really not in control.
Does nostalgia have a darker side? When I reflect back on my earlier self in those pictures, journal entries and mental memories, I can fall into the trap of patronization. Aw, look how cute we were. I remember when things were that simple, that fun and good and uncomplicated. If I’m honest, I know they weren’t. I was just as consumed with the turmoil and stressors of being human then as I am now. So, why do I blunt the edges in retrospect? Maybe it’s the same concept as a mother looking back at the delivery of her baby: we want to have short-term memory. We don’t want to remember the sharp details of the pain and suffering, only the concept of struggle and the glory of the finish. Paradoxically, by blunting the hardship, I find myself dissatisfied by the fact my present and future aren’t as perfectly blissful as that edited memory. The -algia, Greek for pain, in nostalgia comes when I use altered memories of the “glory days” as a measuring stick for my present and future experiences instead of remembering all of the imperfections I’ve smoothed over with mental Photoshop.
Regardless of where it’s from or what it really means, I know that I have nostalgia now. I love the home that I’ve built with the people I love these past four years. I know it will be time to leave and become a doctor, to move to a brand-new city and shoulder the challenges my career and personal life will throw at me, but I savor where I am right now. Knowing that it will end is perhaps why I feel so grateful in the meantime.
Sabrina Bulas is an MS4 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
