Do you like to take trips down memory lane? To wax nostalgic about the 'good old days', and the way things were.

The Prisoner was a TV show from the 1960s, based around a spy who resigned from his role before finding himself kidnapped and trapped in a village from which he can't escape. The spy, played by Patrick McGoohan is called Number 6, and spends each episode in a battle with other characters (namely Number 2), in his ultimately futile attempts to leave the village.

I first watched it a decade ago. I knew nothing about it at the time, but was drawn in by the name (I had written a novella called The Prisoner, and was intrigued to compare notes). The show hooked me from the word go.

It proved to be right up my street. With its allegorical reflection of psychology of dreams, change, isolation, and identity (among other things). Stimulation for the mind, more questions than answers, and a mirror held up to my own existence. 

The village strikes me as a metaphorical place of nostalgia. A setting in the mind of Number 6, to which he cannot help but return over and over. Despite believing that he has being held there by external forces, it is really his own mind holding him prisoner in this seemingly idyllic (yet darkly sinister) setting.

What is Nostalgia?
Nostalgia is a word that has Greek roots. From nostos, which means to return home. And algos, which is about pain. Nostalgia is the pain we feel in the space between where we are, and a place we might identify as 'home' in some way. It is both geographical space, and also space in time (between the present and the past).

It is a dreadful kind of homesickness, because the home you desire is unreachable. Either because it's in the past, or because it never existed in the first place.

I've spoken with introverts and sensitive people, who resonate with the idea of pining for a place they've never been. Or for a fantasy world (Hogwarts anyone?). And the nostalgia (pain of not being able to get there) is real.

Home matters. And when the present feels out of whack or chaotic, home becomes even more desirable. Longing to eliminate the pain of not being at home.

Driven By a Feeling
Nostalgia is driven by a feeling, rather than a fact. It is not the same as reminiscing or remembering. This is why it can be dangerous. If we're unable to disentangle that feeling, we might build a belief upon this false perception of the past and attach a sense of 'magical thinking' to an abstract idea.

We might say things such as, 'if only things were like they used to be, I wouldn't be so ill/depressed/unhappy'. We can become fixated on this unreachable object (i.e. 'The Good Old Days'), and focus on destroying the things we perceive to be blocking us from getting it (i.e. 'People Like That').

Every generation pines for the good old days. Like homing pigeons, lost in the sea of inevitability, where change is one of the few certainties in life. We long to go 'back' to where we were, to make things great 'again', and 'return' to normal. Well we can't go back, things never were great, and normal doesn't exist.

Restorative vs Reflective Nostalgia
In her 2001 book, The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym pointed out a difference between restorative nostalgia, and reflective nostalgia.

Restorative nostalgia is driven by the belief that the past holds the key to that desire to feel happy and at home in the present. It is a drive to reconstruct and relive the way you believe things were in the past.

Reflective nostalgia is that sense of longing, where you allow the yearning and pining for days gone by to simmer in your mind, while fully accepting that those wistful memories are in the past, and that's where they live.

"While restorative nostalgia returns and rebuilds...