Hung luu

Professor M. Howard
Engl 101A 31207
4-10-16

A Wistful Memory
Many of us know that we will one day leave our homes, our neighborhood, cities and our
country. Many of us will leave for long periods of time, and some of us might never return. One
of the thing that we all take with us is our fond memories and feeling of those places. We do not
forget them as they are simply locked away in the far deeps of our minds until the right key is
use to unlock those memories. Think of a place where you once lived as a child. What is the first
thing that pops up? Many of us might be thinking of home. Now think of a TV show or movie
that you watched as a child. How much of it do you remember? Are you suddenly feeling
nostalgic? Nostalgia is what drive us to return home, to watch old movies, TV shows and their
remakes, and it make us want to relive our old adventures.
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, nostalgia is a sentimental longing,
wistfulness or yearning for the past, typically of a period or place with happy or personal
affections it can also be a present experience that evokes feeling of the pasts. Or by our senses
hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell.(nostalgia)

Nostalgia can be seen in many ways, one way I've seen are remakes of old movie or
reruns of old TV series, that many of us have watch as a child. If you remember Jurassic Park
then you will know the recent remake title Jurassic World. I never saw Jurassic Park in the
theater the first time I watch it was at home with a TV and VCR, yes a video tape, theyre nearly
obsolete now.This was back in 2000 when I was 11. I didn't understand much as I watched the
movie. I was focused on the dinosaurs and too excited to follow the plot. After watching
Jurassic Park that day I never saw it again till Jurassic World was announced. When Jurassic
World came out on the big screen I was excited to go watch it. One week before I went to watch
Jurassic World, I watched Jurassic Park again and it was a nostalgia bomb going off in my head.
I felt like a kid again. Almost everything about it was nostalgic, from the gates welcoming you to
the Jurassic Park to the grand theme music, even the ending was nostalgic where the T-rex
roared. This time I picked up the plot and rewatched it several more times. I knew that Jurassic
World would be a big hit when it came out so I went a week after the release and went all out I
paid 35 dollars for a seat in the Imax 3D theater. Watching it in 3D was a good idea cause no one
would see me cry under my glasses, especially when I saw the bronze statue of the late John
Hammond. The movie made me feel like a kid again and surely many other adults as well. All
thanks to Jurassic Park.

If nostalgia is yearning for the past mainly full of happiness, then that the feeling I get
nearly every day. I yearn for the past mainly because I miss it, not my whole past but the one I
had when I was a child and was visiting my home country of Vietnam for the first time, and it
was an adventure. We stayed for 3 months and for a full week of those 3 months me and my
large family traveled on a private tour bus, from my fathers home city in the north to the very
end of the south shore of Vietnam. On our trip we drove up and down swiveling mountain roads
so high up that the cloud would bump along it side. We drove on big and small bridges over
many large and small rivers. We drove passed beautiful rice fields that stretch beyond the
horizon. We visited many buddhist temples and one temple had a large statue of buddha sleeping,
it was as bigger than our bus. As a child, I would never forget my adventure in Vietnam. Now
that Im older that adventure is slipping away as I now have commitments to work, family and
school. Every now and then I get a longing for Vietnam. I would suddenly be urged to drop
everything and book an airline flight to Vietnam because I miss my home country so much.
How many of us get homesick? Especially when we are away from home for a long time.

Nostalgia is mostly the main reason many of us return home after many years away. We might
not realize it. All it takes is a familiar event to happen, like your favorite song that you listen to
at home, food that tastes like your mothers cooking, a similar scenery like rows upon row of
cherry blossom blooming in spring, reminding you of home in Japan or the smell of a french
bakery wafting in the air, as if you're walking on the streets of Paris when you were young.
Nostalgia can be devastating. The more we are away from home or anyplace that we yearn to go
back to, the more we want to return to it. Anything that feel, look, smell, hear or taste of
nostalgia makes us want to return home or a place of happiness. That feeling nostalgia will build
up to the point where we will do anything to achieve it, some of us might even go awol. When
we do return we get a sense of what happiness can be. We will cherish that happy moment,
rediscover its lost emotion, make new memories, and never forget it, then the process repeat
over again because home is where we feel the happiest.
We will always return home may it be a neighborhood, a city, or our country but some of
us could only dream of it. We will watch old TV and movies reruns because we enjoy them and
hope someday they will get a remake. We will never forget our place of happiness because they
are our wishful memories.

Citation
"nostalgia n."Merriam-Webster.Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. N.D. Web. 8 April 2016