How nostalgic of a person are you?

I used to think I was a very nostalgic person. But really, I think I was having a difficult time with change overall. More recently, I have been able to have a better relationship with change through my meditation practice and contemplating impermanence.

My feelings are pretty much like yours. I gravitate to the more logical aspect of thought, but there are times when nostalgic feelings come into play. I’ve gotten choked up reading/writing some Fluther posts answers due to old memories. I don’t think it has anything to do with age, but the amount of empathy we each have. We all have empathy, but it can vary from person to person.

Not at all. I am very emotional, but the past is very much dead to me, good or bad. I love the future and the present.

To elaborate on my nostalgic fits/fear of change: There are times when I just want to grab my kids and hold on to them, as though I can just freeze time. I see photos of them when they were younger, and I can’t help but cry.

This happens less and less now, but I can still get choked up when I am playing a game with my kids if I let a thought carry me away. I am intensely-aware of the impermanence of everything and everyone, and I almost am nostalgic for the current moment as it slips through my fingers.

Maybe not as much as you seem to be @rockfan, but I do get it from time to time. It’s a nice way to remember where you came from and what you’ve done in your life.

Someone once told me I live so much in the past that it was hindering my progress! There was truth to that I have to admit.

Learn from the past. Do not live it, is what I say to myself. When done right, reminiscing and being nostalgic are good ways to extract joy from the past, as long as you balanced it with a certain visual projection of yet another joyful image of the future and certainly while also appreciating the gifts of the present moment in which you are in.

In moments of extreme distress, being nostalgic could help to ease one’s troubles if not totally erase it. There is that gratitude I feel for having such a past where even though it’s not perfect, it was a life. Not perfect but still a good life. This realization often lifts me up from my doldrums just like that, like magic!

There’s nowt wrong with looking back on your life, however short. As long as it’s not with any regret or negativity. I’m quite nostalgic, when I want to be, but then the future’s bright so I prefer to look ahead.

Not in the least. Quite the opposite, in fact. Looking back, even on happy events and periods, always gives me an unsettling feeling. Life in that remembered form is full of my old demons and conceits. I have no interest in revisiting them. This is so much better.

I am very analytical and, at the same time, very nostalgic.

Here’s a suggestion if you’re nostalgic: Keep a weekly planner type of calendar and make notes of fun things you did that day, concerts you went to, or just memorable events that occurred throughout the year. I do it for every vacation and it makes a great reminder. When you get old your memory goes to hell.

Nor very .. sometimes I think to what happened but I seldom do that .

Like @tranquilsea – very nostalgic, also very analytical. Perhaps it’s an aspect of an introverted personality to some degree.

I’d long for yesterday, if only I could remember it.
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

What @Pied_Pfeffer said. I’m very much of a logical and rational person, but I sometimes do get emotional over the simplest of things.
That doesn’t happen often though.

I have always been nostalgic and have regarded passing time in the spirit of what the Japanese call mono no aware which describes beauty as an awareness of the transience of things.

The words in Japanese mean sensitivity or sadness and things. According to mono no aware, a falling autumn flower is more beautiful than one in full bloom; a fading sound more beautiful than one clearly heard; the moon partially clouded more appealing than full.

Sometimes I’m just solid cold logic and rationality, other times the nostalgia hurts.

I long for the days of worn out ill fitting hand me down clothing! I am a sentimental fool!

I don’t see nostalgia and logic as mutually exclusive seeing how it’s logical to be nostalgic, it’s part of having memories. I don’t get hysterical or anything over past things but I do get nostalgic.

I’m pretty nostalgic. Everytime I think about the past, I feel a pang of sorrow and pain. A longing for whatever past event/period I’m thinking about.
What I never realize in time is that back then, I thought of even further back and felt the same things. It’s like I can never recognize the happiness that’s occurring right under my nose, and I dismiss all present as bullshit. It’s pretty pathetic.
I’ll probably think about these current days in ten years and go, man was I happy back then. Lol.

Some things trigger nostalgic feelings in me—returning to locations, looking at old photos, re-reading old poems/songs/phrases, sometimes smelling something familar or seeing something in nature. Some things are powerful enough that I have to pause to catch my breath.
Oddly enough, I’m not nostalgic for other things that other people might be. I miss people who are not with me (far away or passed away) but am not emotional about it; one friend of mine will just think of someone and tear up. I feel rotten sometimes that I don’t miss people as much as I “should,” but I just appreciate our shared time for what it is/was so much that I don’t get nostalgic for people… but I don’t know what will happen when my closest relatives and friends pass…

…sigh.

Hey @Some_Ghost, what do our friends from ‘over there’ say? Just lost a friend to an aneurysm today… NOW I’m totally nostalgic for him…

Very

I have fond memories and appreciate the past

I’m sorry for your friend. You have my condolences. But all ghosts are alone. I don’t know what the rest say. They don’t know what I say.

And even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. You’ll know that when you die, if you pass on, and aren’t a ghost.

Yes, I’m quite nostalgic.

Belated thought…a smell can also travel me back in time. While inspecting a hotel, we checked a storage room that smelled exactly like my grandparents’ attic. The smell of Crayons congers up memories of kindergarten. After Dad died, one sister bought each of us a bar of his favorite brand of tar soap and the other bought us a pack of his favorite type of gum. Both were kept for years for an occasional whiff. Gee, I miss that man.

9 on a scale of 1 to 10.