I’m using the word “we” because I’m assuming I’m not the only one who had this happen to.
This doesn’t happen to me at all anymore, but I remember that when I’d see old paintings or certain classical songs or even a couple of sceneries I’d get nostalgic (kinda) it’s like a mix of nostalgia and amazement and was simply strange. There’s a Portuguese term for this: “Saudade” which is “a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament” I feel like it was a bit like this, but to a lesser extent since I didn’t really melancholic much, but I suppose it was kind of an emptiness yet astonishment for the history?
Also fun fact I ran across while researching is that apparently, low self-esteem or a sense of despair over life’s meaning can drive nostalgic musings. I’m positive that this wasn’t the reason in this case since it wasn’t just completely at random and I’d also felt “obsessed”? And amazed with the history and background of said things, though who knows? (But I really doubt it since there’s a whole term for this implying other people feel this too making it not all that uncommon)
I’m pretty sure when you feel nostalgic about something you’ve never seen or heard before, it’s not meaning that you’re lonely or whatever, just that you’re super curious about a time in which you weren’t around.
For example, though I’ve been playing Roblox since 2014, there are just some games that I missed out on and didn’t have the chance to come across, like Arcane Adventures. When I hear all of the cool stories and I see previous videos of the game, it kinda makes me wish that I was present in that moment so that I could experience it too. I think it’s basically like your brain tricking you like in a dream where for a certain period of time you’re not aware that you are inside the dream. For this type of nostalgia, you’re basically in a dream and you feel as though you’ve been actually experiencing it when in reality it’s just a dream and you weren’t actually present when whatever was happening was going on.
I kinda thought it was like this in a way, I’ve always found older times interesting especially older Europe as a whole, but it’s not really like I were dreaming I was in those times, rather longing for…I dunno…It’d just be rather strange. But what really puzzles me is why our brains do this, and why it’s such a strange feeling that never happens otherwise, at least for me.