Nostalagia

Happy memories for me but very happy with my life now

Best wishes to you Anniebach. Your life is full of experience.

Anniebach thank you for that link. It seems to me to be similar to the Portuguese word ‘Saudade’ which describes a similar longing or yearning which is very familiar to me.

bystander.homestead.com/Portuguese_saudade.html

kathyd I understand that feeling.
I’ve spent (wasted perhaps) many years of my life looking back and longing for my early years to have been different. I’m in a better place these days and try to look forward not back.

So much so that having nurtured a notion to live in a different town for a long time I finally decided to make it happen. Within the last month I’ve reserved a plot on a new build in the town, and put my house on the market. I’ve had a couple of offers so it will go to a closing date next week.

Onwards and upwards.

I usually enjoy looking back at happy times but last night I dreamed about my mother -she was coming to see me perform in a concert and I was so pleased to see her. When I woke up I was quite sad. But she died a long time ago when my children were little and in the dream they were all grown up and coming to the concert too which really doesn't make sense! If she were still alive she'd be over 100 now but in the dream she was about my age and I was younger!!

Nostalgia is a perfectly normal feeling. I believe everyone can reflect on their life and remember something good that they miss today.

I understood it as being a longing for something in the past-perhaps to times when parents were alive and you were not the oldest member of a family.
I'm amazed to read that some on GN feel their parents are 'up there' looking down.

I sometimes feel my mother could have had a better life than she did, but accept that she is really no longer there and don't indulge in nostaligic feelings about her.
Life is for living. What is past is past and we can only move forward.

Of course I love to look at photos, but understand that nostalgia is a feeling that those times were better, and in my life they were not.

How do you know MargaretX that the people who we love aren't up there looking down on us? I feel very strongly that no one knows what happens to us when we die. When we do die it all becomes obvious and, as I have said, NO ONE knows until then.
So if people wish to think that their dearly departed parents are 'up there' that is fine by me - for all we know they could be right.

I am amazed that some declare there is no afterlife, no proof which supports this.

Afterlife? Dream on. You are entitled to imagine what you like but at the same time you cannot ignore science and even your own death. Our brains are amazing organs yet they die with us. There is no magic bullet here; no mysticism; no out of life experience. Then just where is this 'up there'? Over centuries we have been subjected to so much nonsense all in an effort to control us and to get us do the bidding of others who have acquired control. Religion, all of it, is man made, and when you examine just how people have been abused in the name of religion by those who have control it amazes me that there are still so many people who accept that control.

Post proof there is no afterlife.

And is it not possible to post your opinions without mocking the faith of some posters.

Science does not have all the answers

I am with DanniRae.

Me too - and I hope they aren't too upset by what they see .
They've probably seen a lot worse.

MargaretX I agree we can not change the past but by thinking of it hopefully it makes us more aware of the good and the bad things in life, the wrong and the right. It may make us not so guilliable, niave, stupid or selfish, it may help us avoid making mistakes in the future. Most of us can not just most forward and forget our past life no matter how much we want too.I agree that no one knows if there is an afterlife, but it would be lovely to think that our loved ones are waiting for us

I suppose that it is the feeling of loss of loved ones, and loss of childhood, that makes me seek religion. Unlike some people I don't accept what preachers usually preach and I don't expect to find any 'proof'. I hope, and I seek reality.