Inc Description Nostalgia

A chap from the BBC once asked me in an interview why I still played with Star Wars toys, and whether I felt childish. I asked if he owned any. He said he’d stopped playing with toys at 12, because that stuff “was for kids.” I thought: the creativity in you died the day you stopped playing with toys.

A tadpole is hardwired to lose its tail and grow legs. Humans aren’t hardwired to lose interest in toys at 12. Society does that. And people who follow the cookie-cutter life society lays out for them often end up with regrets, as The Top Five Regrets of the Dying shows.

Society makes you feel childish for playing with toys so you’ll focus on getting into a good university, so you can get a good job, so you can earn a decent salary, so you can take out a mortgage and put a bit aside for your pension, so you can go back to work the next day to pay off the mortgage and the bills. Copy and paste for 60 years.

Nostalgia is a longing for moments from your own past, and it’s good for you. Research links it to lower levels of inflammatory cytokines, more creativity and optimism, and feeling younger. A 2012 study in the journal Memory found it helped people connect their past to their present and find more meaning in their lives.

Science is still working out why we feel nostalgia at all. It’s strongest when triggered by smell, so my own theory is that it goes back to our hunter-gatherer days, when smell told us where to go and which mushrooms and herbs were safe. Smell is picked up by the olfactory bulb, which is closely linked to the amygdala, the part of the brain that handles emotion and fight or flight. Recognizing a smell could be life or death. Once we started hunting moving prey, sight took over and our sense of smell faded.

I still play with Star Wars toys (LEGO!), and I get especially nostalgic playing retro games on my Megadrive, Super Famicom and PC Engine. Just thinking about them takes me back to the early 90s, when I’d just started learning Japanese. Without the Megadrive, I wouldn’t have discovered Japanese culture, there would be no Smart Doll, and life would have been very, very different.

Whether you’re into retro anime, cosplay, gaming, LEGO or fashion dolls, the people who embrace nostalgia are the ones who get the benefits. As for anyone who calls you childish, pass on your condolences and keep doing what you do.