Nostalgia, Travel and the Mediterranean
Tell me, how can I feel nostalgic for places I am yet to visit?
Hello lovely,
I’ve written about nostalgia previously, but it’s something that truly fascinates me. Especially when that pang hits you and you feel nostalgic for places you’ve not visited or experienced yet. But something deep inside you feels as though you’ve been there many times before.
I wrote most of this whilst flying home from Cyprus last week, having had a wonderful and much needed time away, letting everything go under the Mediterranean sun.
I feel very nostalgic whenever I travel… Like I belong to these places that I often only experience for a few days. It’s almost like you can imagine your life there. The subtle longing of being pulled in two opposing directions - a life of possibility in a new place, and the place that currently has your heart and that you call home.
Then arrives the pang of sadness when leaving, but the pure joy of getting to go back home.
Do you feel this too? That aching in your bones for two places at once?
Travel changes us, not always permanently. It can bring certain things back into focus, or instead rid our mind of the things that cause us discomfort.
Oftentimes, it’s like we’re wading through thick fog, numb to the small things around us because the noise of everyday life is so debilitating and loud. When we travel our senses reignite. We suddenly become aware of the little moments once again -
flowers in bloom, the sun on our skin, the sound of the waves lapping against the shore -
the pure excitement of an unfamiliar place.
It’s the realisation that everything we thought was missing in our lives has actually been there all along… Only it takes getting out of our usual environment to bring it back to life, to place us gently back into the present.
I love travelling, and whilst I may not travel as often as some, I am also extremely aware that I am very privileged to travel to one or two places each year outside of my own country. And for that, I am eternally grateful.
Something inside my soul lights up when I am somewhere new, and immersing myself in new cultures. However, I am somewhat biased, because my love for the Mediterranean runs so deeply inside my veins. It is somewhere I travelled a lot to as a child with my family each year and I have such fond memories of being in that part of the world.
I am immensely nostalgic for the Mediterranean, and I dream of exploring as much as I can there in the future. Well, at least to what is financially possible anyway. It feels as though a huge part of my heart belongs there, and I’m grateful to have witnessed the glimpses of it’s beauty that I have so far.
Tell me, where is somewhere you feel nostalgic for? Be it somewhere you have never visited, but feel a part of you belongs there, or somewhere you have visited that you long to go back to?
That’s exactly it! It’s the longing for a time when life was simpler somehow. I feel it’s our minds trying to recreate those feelings that we experienced. Thank you so much for reading and sharing your views x
For me, nostalgia is a blend of place and time. Often I find myself nostalgic for how I felt in a particular moment in a particular place: calm and present as the water lapped at my toes and the breeze ran cool across my face; at peace, as the pace of life slowed down and before my life was turned upside down by trauma; free, as I ran across the mountains unbound by anything. I feel nostalgia so often and I’m not sure what to do with it - but I’m trying to lean into it and embrace those memories in the present as much as I can.