These days, life sucks. Whether you are Googling the black pill phenomenon, watching videos of mass death and destruction abroad, or seeing democracy rockslide into an oceanic oblivion, there are few places to turn for solace. The apps on our phones — once teeming with a wide range of serotonin laced distraction — have officially identified themselves as a central and menacing part of the problem. So how to survive the onslaught of the next 1,175 days of Trump?
A trip down memory lane, baby.
I abruptly realized I’d been using nostalgia as a balm for 2025’s horrors when I heard Vogue impresario Anna Wintour treat it as an ugly word. In a recent New Yorker interview, Wintour’s disdain for nostalgia was on full display as she insisted she is “always more interested in looking forward than looking back.” Sadly, this perception of nostalgia is nothing new. Since its inception into the cultural lexicon in the mid 20th century, nostalgia has often been coded as burdensome and embarrassing. Today’s tech-bro “leaders” are eager to jump on this train, asking us to look forward and up up up — but absolutely, certainly, never back. You can sense a pride in their ability to disconnect from memory, from sentiment — a bravado in their constant striving. If you’re striving, you’re moving. If you’re moving, you’re enacting “progress.” Move fast, break things, etcetera.
And yet.
Nostalgia doggedly continues to enter the American reality, whether it’s invited or not. It often appears in waves, crashing against the zeitgeist when there is a dire need for escape. In times of war, economic depression, and political assassination, nostalgia has offered a necessary time machine out of a hellish present. Unfortunately, this ache for a remembered history has often been weaponized by political parties, turning a personalized memory into a collective ideology. The right has offered to “make America great again” both in the 1980s with Reagan (the OG MAGA) and today, bastardizing nostalgia to create a rosy alternate history that never existed.
Nostalgia, therefore, has gotten a bad rap. And I get it. But I am here to reclaim our winsome superhero in our hour of need and offer you a chance at its restorative and healing powers. As your de facto white rabbit, I suggest a few tips and pointers to help you on your nostalgia journey. Turn to this list when you need a lift, a break, or some semblance of peace.
The Top Five Ways to Hit Peak Nostalgia
Save some of your shit. Cherish your saved shit. As someone born in the 1980s, I am older than you. Take my advice, and save some of your shit. What to save? That’s up to you, but let’s start with items that “spark joy.” A few stuffies who survived the hunger games gauntlet of your teenage years? A good start. The Pokémon cards you “collected” in fifth grade in order to overcome crippling insecurity around the opposite sex? Sure! A favorite book or series? 100% perfect, especially if it brings you back to core memories like running around your house lit up with an unyielding flame of love for…Harry Potter. (To clarify, these examples have absolutely NO relation to my own life.) A grandmother’s signed bookmark, a grandfather’s felt hand-made hat? Absolutely. The more tangible these items are, the better. If you can wear them, read them, cuddle them, sniff them, transport yourself in them — that’s a plus. Hit the senses, and begin to feel the dread of 2025 ease as you reconnect with your most grounded self.
Make a playlist. This is where you need to be brutally honest with yourself, or the trip won’t work. I need you to make a playlist of the songs you actually listened to in high school (these are the songs that act like a needle to the vein of a nostalgia high). Not the songs you said you listened to, not the ones you played when other people were around. I need the ones you played solo, the ones you belted, the ones you screamed to, the ones you cried to. In an act of radical transparency, I offer a few songs from my own playlist (the judgment is deafening): “Vindicated” by Dashboard Confessional, “Jumper” by Third Eyed Blind, J-Kwon’s “Tipsy,” “Slow Motion” by Juvenile, “Santeria” by Sublime…you get it.
To add to my own self-flagellation, I offer as tribute the entire track list of Now That’s What I Call Music DISC 5 which came out in the year 2000 when I was eleven. I could recite every word to this “album” frontwards, backwards, sideways. Listening to the songs now (RIP Aaron Carter), I’m transported to the backseat of a too-hot rental car in rural Delaware, driving from my grandparents’ house in Maryland down to Rehoboth Beach for an annual family meet up. Looking out the window, I experienced a distinctly adolescent pleasure — the fledgling taste of early adulthood. With headphones on, I was able to separate myself from my environs (family, friends, their perceptions of me), and live in my own head for a little while. I can feel the joy of the simplicity of that act, intoxicating with all its promise. As the nostalgia swells, the strangulating noose of 2025 loosens, and I can actually catch my breath. The nostalgia core is working!! Let’s continue…
Eat at El Pollo Loco. Ok, so this offering is really specific. But everyone has their own El Pollo Loco, am I right? I just happened to grow up in the San Fernando Valley, ensconced in a concrete suburbia where El Pollo Loco offered the ultimate hit of fast-food luxury. As a grown, I have internalized the understanding that eating such food is “bad for you.” But can a BRC burrito really be bad, in any sense of the word? Go visit your version of El Pollo Loco, order the usual, and find out.
Visit an old landmark. This may take some time and effort, but it’s well worth it. Head back to a physical space you used to frequent as a kid, or one that holds significant value for you (a parent’s childhood home, a grandparent’s, a friend of yours house as a kid, your old school). Walk around the space, or through it if you’re able (got to say it — don’t break in). Take in the surprising amount of memories that come flooding back, the details about them, the ones that feel good, the ones that don’t. Let your body ease into what it was like to live then, to be then, to be outside of now. Appreciate what this old place meant to you, means to you. Savor this access to core memories, and bring what you find there back into your present.
Watch a beloved old film with beloved old people. By old people, I do not mean physically old (but that’s ok too). I mean people who are old in your life, people who know you. People who have been around for your creation of self. Watch a treasured movie together, and remember what it felt like to watch it when it was new. Appreciate it now that it’s not. Perhaps one of the cornerstone movies from your childhood is playing at the Hollywood Bowl. Maybe it’s on the same day your nephew turns ten. Get your mom, your sister, and your kid nephew to belt “I Am 16 Going On 17″ at a massive screen surrounded by other belters. Know that, however daunting, you can access joy throughout the tumult. Feel like the world might actually turn out ok, if only until the credits run.