One of the most interesting things about humans is how much we like being emotional, reliving feelings and memories.
We can’t generalize that we all want to relive the same emotions, but yes we are addicted to emotions and feelings.
Some of us crave the dopamine rush, maybe that’s why sports, races, and gambling attract so many. Some of us seek calm through meditation, sound healing, or quiet reflection. Some are looking for that oxytocin popping in us through those cozy loving memories and places.
Some feel alive at a music concert. The thrill of seeing your favorite artist, your idol, the shared energy of thousands feeling the same emotion. Jumping from a cliff and adventure sports are known to make you feel alive again. And that, too, is a kind of high.
Then there are those who want to relive even deeper emotions.
We miss the old days. We want to feel those softer moments again. You find yourself watching a movie you once saw with someone special. You listen to the same playlist from your favorite vacation. The same songs you danced to with your friends a decade ago. You feel joy in your heart visiting a place where you vacationed with your friends once.
A trip so good you can’t remember anything except for the happiness it brought.
You attend a marriage ceremony, and the rituals remind you of your own. You lovingly think about your partner again, you feel grateful to be here with them. You smile for the newly married couple in front of you, and you smile for the newly married couple you once were.
Later, you walk through a park and see a little girl sitting in her mother’s lap. Instantly, you think of your own daughter when she was that young. The child now standing tall beside you becomes, for a moment, that same little one curled in your arms again.
You pick up a book your parents once read, and somehow, you can almost feel their presence in its pages.You can smell them and can feel their fingers on those pages. You listen to the same morning bhajan because it reminds you of home.
You are driving your car and suddenly the radio plays your mom’s favorite song. Mom doesn’t live here anymore, but she stays in that song somehow for you. You neither can pause the song because your hands have frozen, nor want to pause because at that moment, she’s here again.
You feel so much yet you feel nothing. At that moment the world stops.
You are breathing but living in the past.
And sometimes, you attend a condolence meeting. You feel that ache, the unbearable weight of loss , the one you thought you had already lived through. You never wished to live it again. You had shoved the memories of that phase somewhere deep within you.
Yet here you are, reliving the passing of someone you still adore and your heart tears open again.
You bleed tears once more, perhaps the ones that never fully fell back then.
You come across a movie where someone important dies. You know what’s coming , but you don’t stop watching. You want to feel that burn again, the knots in your stomach, the lump in your throat. You let your face fill with tears, your breath quicken , as if dying again in that same moment.
Why do we do this? Why do we like reliving these deep moments again and again?
Maybe because, when we feel those emotions again, we become whole again. The heart, mind, and memory fall back into rhythm; everything that once fractured quietly aligns.
Psychologists call this emotional coherence. It is when your thoughts, feelings, and memories finally make sense together. When the pain connects you back to who you once were.
So perhaps we don’t chase the sadness or nostalgia itself. We chase the coherence; that fleeting feeling when everything inside us speaks the same language.
You hear someone speak of heartbreak, and suddenly you’re back in your own story of one-sided love. They talk about hopelessness, and you remember your endless wait. The prayers, the astrological predictions, the blacked-out hope, the shrine you visited for a wish that never came true.
Years later, you may thank God that it didn’t, at the same shrine. Yet, you don’t regret the feeling because those emotions made you who you are.
Can we really undo what we have felt so deeply?
Can I move on from the house I grew up in? Can I truly leave behind the school where I spent a decade? Will the old ice-cream shop from my dating days ever stop reminding me of the love I once felt?
And do I even want to forget?
Don’t I know that I still live there, just as I live here now? It doesn’t mean I’m stuck in the past, it means I still miss feeling.
Can the heart ever truly turn to stone, or are we just covering it like ash covering a burning coal?
Leave a Reply