I recently realized that I’ve reached an age where all my favorite conversations begin with “Remember when…”

Remember when your family used to go to the VHS rental store every week? When you all shared one desktop computer and one phone line? Remember that fuzzy static feeling you’d get if you stood too close to the TV? The PlayPlace at McDonald’s? Jelly sandals, scholastic book fairs, Johnny Damon’s luscious, long hair? 

That familiar feeling of missing something is different for everyone. Maybe it’s a generational phenomenon. I’m sure my dad feels some type of way about playing Pong on the original Atari or when they used to drive around in cars with wheels made of rocks like on “The Flintstones.”

But, regardless of what it is you think about, I think nostalgia is something that we all share. Not only that, but I think it’s one of the most powerful feelings in the world. 

I know this to be true for three main reasons. 

First, all of the greatest songs ever recorded (Rihanna’s “Disturbia,” Aaron Carter’s “How I Beat Shaq,” and Elvis Costello’s “Everyday I Write the Book” — in that order) were released before 2008. And that’s not because I don’t think there hasn’t been any good music since then (although I am skeptical). It’s because of this feeling I get when I listen to them. 

It feels like I’m up past my bedtime at a slumber party in my best friend’s basement and we’re watching MTV when MTV actually aired music videos, or I’m in the backseat of my parents’ 1999 Honda Civic with my pajamas on driving home from my uncle’s house on Christmas Eve. 

That’s what nostalgia does. It tricks us into believing we can visit an old version of ourselves for at least three and a half minutes.

Second, I think being nostalgic is a way of coping with the fact that life is fleeting. When I think about it, most of the things that I’m nostalgic about, I didn’t have control over losing. 

A lot of what I miss can’t be faulted to anything but the passage of time and the natural progression of life. I can’t go back to the days when “The Rugrats” aired every day before school. I can’t bring back the Old Country Buffet. I’ll never be eight years old again, drinking a Kool-Aid burst from the plastic bottle with the twist-off cap and spending a carefree day at the neighborhood pool. 

And what’s really difficult to confront is that so much of life exists only in memory. It’s never coming back. I’ll never smell my grandmother’s cookies again, or hear my grandpa’s laugh. We’re approaching a generation of kids who don’t know what a landline telephone is, who don’t know about rewinding a VHS tape too fast and all the film gets stuck.

There’s this quote in John Steinbeck’s 1952 “East of Eden” that I want tattooed on the back of my eyelids: “Oh, but strawberries will never taste so good again.” Uttered as the novel reaches the turn of the 20th century, and everyone is talking about how good life used to be. The people of Salinas County are despairing over lost time and how it will never be the same as those easy days of the 1800s, when you could trust a gentleman’s word and all that children had to worry about was finding a nice smooth rock.

And the third reason why I think nostalgia is an all-powerful feeling is exactly that. Remembering the past is a lot easier than thinking about the future. 

It turns out, there’s a psychological reason for all of this. A couple years ago, when I was doing research for a school project, I came across a psychologist named Richard Carleton, who published this paper on the fear of the unknown. He called it “One fear to rule them all.” 

And Carleton had all this clinical research and scientific data that basically led back to one main point: not knowing what comes next is a fundamental fear. It might even be the fundamental fear. The biggest, scariest root that all worries and anxieties are traced back to. 

In that way, fearing change is a natural human condition. It’s littered with unknowns. I think a lot of people would rather have the certainty of what they know than what they don’t. That’s why, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I find comfort in listening to those old classic songs, watching a movie I loved, or going to a place that reminds me of that familiar, easier time.

Maybe that’s what nostalgia really is. Not necessarily wishing we could go backward, but reaching for something familiar when the future feels uncertain.

And there’s probably a lesson here. I might be holding on to the past a little too tightly. The memories were never meant to be places we live. They’re places we visit. Then we have to come back.

But oh, those strawberries will never taste so good again.