Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a disease, especially of older people, displaced persons and even those on brief excursions. They miss something, somethings and then they fantasize memories and the past.
Many of the "things" are not even "good" things but simply a bit of time recalled and enhanced beyond reason. Foods, pleasures, even basic activities, such as family chores, play and friends, take on a greater importance.
In general I'm not a very nostalgic person though many in my situation are. For the elderly, living overseas for a long time and missing home, fantasy memories are common. Things seemed better.
On a side note, if you marry someone from a foreign country and move to that country (Japan, 45 years and counting), as I did, be prepared for a reverse nostalgia. Your wife or husband, recalling their youth, in my case right where we are currently living, can be a distraction. And you and your nostalgia were not there.
It is a large part of human character that we are selective of our memories. Certain patterns emerge, very likely accidentally, in the mind. Happiness, sadness, peacefulness and even violence are emphasized and pushed forward while other memories of these same patterns are forgotten, neglected, or even transformed.
Bad memories of poverty, neglect, abuse, stinginess, frugality, and wastefulness become cute, funny, part of the character of the lost times. Forgiveness is common. Current reality can be displaced by this way of thinking and these beliefs, however false they may be.
Sadly, even culturally, nationally, and even globally, these events occur. Growing up in the 50s and 60s, listening to tales of the 20s and 30s, the Great Depression, World Wars and living under the threat of the atomic bomb were my youth. I seldom miss it, except for the people I loved.
But too many cling to their past and the fiction they have created. The "better life and times" is a disease that grows and for which there is no actual cure, except sanity.
I'm not a physicist; I cannot understand the science of physics. For me time is lineal and the "now" is forever changing, moving on despite my wishes. The past is known, often mistakenly, and the future is unknown, but we frequently believe we can predict it.
We cannot retrieve one nor can we know the other.
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