Is it All in My Head?: A Deep Dive into Sentimentality
*Article from Lexington Lines Autumn/Winter 2023 Issue, pages 70-73
Check out the full issue here.
Rounding a corner I could drive with my eyes closed, I found myself in my beloved hometown. A familiar cool breeze off Lake Michigan rolled through my open windows. Being back was bittersweet, and I smiled through the crash of memories.
Why do I put so much value in objects and places that don’t remember me or stop moving when I’m out of their orbit? My world kept moving, even without my favorite coffee shop and boutique. My family porch swing, hanging in place through each season, doesn’t remember me. The tree in the driveway that looked over me through every first day of school as I waited for the bus? It doesn’t remember me either.
These things were a constant in my life, always there, never faltering as relics I could count on when I envisioned home.
The routines and patterns I established to keep my orbit around those moments made them grow more significant. I felt that they would always be there, and when that tree was eventually cut down, and the chains were replaced on the porch swing, I took it as a personal attack—as if my own life were at stake if a bit of change occurred to my sentimental order.
So why do we value the unvaluable? Why do we attach memories and emotions to items that would otherwise be meaningless? Sentimentality isn’t about the objects themselves, but rather, the memories they help us retain.
“Sentimentality is just a natural human function, regardless if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s something unconscious,” Julian D. tells me.
Julian, a Queens College graduate student in Mental Health Counseling, explains that it has to do with the amygdala—a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain. Among other things, it’s responsible for recognizing feelings we have as a reaction to what we experience and encoding memories with the relevant emotions.
“Memories that are encoded with emotions are stronger, they last longer, and they’re easier to recollect,” he says. “When you take a picture, that image is a memory object. It represents a specific place. A specific memory.”
Of course, the person who took the photo is potentially the only one who knows about the memory.
“It’s not that the image holds memories; it’s more your key to unlocking the memories that you have within.”
By shifting the question from why we place sentimental value on objects to why they are important to us, we can better understand our own emotions and memories.
“Memory objects don’t help us remember, but they remind us to remember, and it’s something only you can understand,” Julian says.
Julian gives the example of a lighter he keeps because his uncle gave it to him at a family reunion.
“The lighter itself is pretty cheap; you can find it online for probably five dollars. But that’s not why I like it,” he expresses. I picture him flipping the lighter in his hand.
“I don’t like it for its purpose or its value. I like it because it reminds me of my uncle. There’s a person, a history tied to the object,” he continues. “He could’ve given me something else, and I would still think about my uncle. It’s not really the object itself, but more of the history behind it.”
Similarly, Yasmin Sophia feels connected to her great-grandmother’s solid wood wardrobe because of its history.
“She was a very classy, fashionable lady, standing only 4 feet 11 inches—a teacher, artist, and a children’s book author,” recalls Yasmin, an Afro-Latina singer, actress, and content creator from New Jersey. “I was always in awe of the fact that she made sure to have her hair and makeup done and be dressed every day all the way into her 90s.”
Regarding sentimentality, Yasmin “thinks of butterflies in [her] stomach, with the feeling of deep emotional attachment to something or someone.” From the sweet perfume of her great-grandmother’s clothes that still wafts out of the wardrobe to the idea of who she was as a woman—it creates a feeling of immense gratitude.
“I am grateful to my ancestors who carved the path for things to be better and better for every generation,” Yasmin says. “We are an amalgamation of all our experiences and the people that came before us.”
“We have no way of stopping change in our worlds; it’s guaranteed things will change,” she adds passionately. “But if we can hold on to something, it can make us feel like we have a little more control over our past and maybe our destinies.”
Control seems to be the narrative with Ryan Lombard, who spoke fondly of a collection of cards his father has sent him over the past year.
As the PR Director at Hutch Designs in New York, Ryan pays attention to the story, and with his father suffering from prostate cancer that has spread to his bones and spine, the story matters now more than ever.
“Lately, when he sends me a card, whether for a birthday or a holiday, I don’t even open it,” Ryan explains. “I save it in a folder so that one day when I miss him or I am having a rough day, I have something to remind me of him.”
Ryan controls the narrative by savoring each moment they spend together. By preserving the cards, he’s able to have new interactions with his father in the future. Kitschy Hallmark cards with handwritten mailing addresses, all in a familiar script, hold more power when coming from a parent.
“The cards and letters mean a lot to me, because even though I don’t want to admit to myself, his time is coming to an end within a year or two,” Ryan expresses.
By holding onto each card and saving them for future days when he knows he’ll miss his father more than usual, Ryan is controlling the destiny of his relationship with his father.
“Sentimental items act as a source of comfort and a way to preserve the memory of what has been lost,” he says.
Zouie G., originally from the Philippines, has been living in New York City for the past several years and understands the need to preserve memories. She has a particular pink blouse that has brought her good luck on many occasions and prompts positive memories of her time in the city.
“Even if it doesn’t fit anymore, I just like to keep it because it reminds me where I am in life and where I’ve been,” she says.
But what happens when our memory objects aren’t available to us anymore, or when the places we encode with meaningful memories have permanently changed? Why is the sense of loss so profound?
Dr. Peter Gollwitzer, a German psychologist and NYU professor, has done extensive research on Symbolic Self-Completion Theory—essentially, what makes each individual “themselves” and how they measure success.
“Objects can be used to indicate who you are and who you want to be,” according to Dr. Gollwitzer. He gave the example of someone celebrating a career milestone by buying a car; it feels as though the message of their success is being communicated outwardly, when in fact, no one but that person knows the car’s significance.
Nostalgia plays a critical role, Dr. Gollwitzer says, because it is “a quick and easy way to create feelings of completeness.”
When memories objects are gone, then, like the tree at my house, there is a bittersweet feeling that something is incomplete.
Nevertheless, I ultimately find gratitude when replaying memories from my childhood home in my mind —gratitude for feeling connections to objects that so clearly define a sense of home. And while the items and places I hold dearly in my heart may not remember me, I remember them for their significance and the emotions they awaken.
Yasmin, Ryan, and Zouie always find their way to gratitude in their recollections, too. While many objects we keep may hold a sad truth to them about change or grief, key memories are the ones we keep most fondly. The ones that signify who we were at that time and who we are now.
Sentimentality, properly contextualized, helps us better understand our own journeys and why we make the choices we make. It’s not that we place value on items that would otherwise be valueless; it’s that we hold the key to our past, and these memory objects are a way to unlock them, a way of acquiring a vision of your life that feels complete.