Heidi Stevens: Obama cautioned against nostalgia. But is fondness for the past really all bad?

When former President Barack Obama addressed the massive, merry crowd at the Obama Presidential Center dedication ceremony on June 18, a few lines landed like a balm.

"For us to give up, for us to give in now, after all this country has been through, to cynicism and division would be a betrayal of our founding ideals, a betrayal of our faith."

Followed by this one: "And I remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel the same way, that as unsettled as we are, people aren't looking for perpetual anger and division. They are looking for fairness and common sense and mutual respect, that deep in our gut we want to find a way to turn towards each other again, not further away."

Behind him sat a bipartisan group of former presidents and first ladies. In front of him sat leaders and artists and teachers and students and preachers and people from every walk of life, gathered in person and on live streams to witness history and also, if we're honest, to remember what it feels like when a president conjures the best of us.

But Obama had little use for nostalgia that day.

"The exhibits in the center are not meant to evoke nostalgia for some gauzy, bygone era, some unattainable past that we can dream about, and say, oh, we miss you, Barack," he told the crowd. "They're meant to remind us of who we can be, to remind us of what's possible, so we can forge ahead, clear-eyed and confident, and do the work that still needs to be done."

The night before the dedication, he addressed a crowd of Obama White House alums similarly.

"What I hope is that you don't feel nostalgia," he said. "I don't believe in nostalgia because I think nostalgia implies this sentiment that there's this thing in the past that was somehow golden and better but is unattainable now. … It makes us feel like, ‘Well, you know, that was wonderful. But now this is the reality and there's not much we can do about it.' There's a way in which nostalgia lets us off the hook."

I love that.

But does nostalgia really let us off the hook?

I called Krystine Batcho, a psychology professor at LeMoyne University and expert in nostalgia. Batcho has spent the past three decades researching the emotion and even developed a Nostalgia Inventory, which measures individuals' propensity toward it.

Nostalgia, she said, can actually be quite useful.

"Highly nostalgic people lean toward the optimist side," she said. "They spend a lot of time thinking about their past. And even when they find some yucky stuff there, they look for redemptive qualities. ‘That was unfair that I experienced that, but look what I did next.' They use the past as a challenge and a learning experience."

Nostalgia correlates with pro-social behavior. Highly nostalgic people, Batcho's research shows, are more likely to donate to worthy causes, engage in volunteer work and be politically active.

"They tend to be other-directed," she explained.

When she first started researching the emotion, Batcho, who considers herself highly nostalgic, found it was framed negatively.

"What I read painted nostalgic people as stuck in the past or wanting to go back in time," she said. "I thought, ‘I don't feel that way at all.'"

And it wasn't based on any data. So she started digging.

As part of her research, Batcho took a deep dive into historical memoirs, including several written by authors who, as young adults, joined the Ukrainian Resistance during World War II. She wanted to learn what motivated them to risk torture and death to defend their nation's independence.

"It turns out they risked their lives because they were nostalgic for all the things they had benefited from in their short lives, things that would disappear if they lost their country to Russia," she said. "They wanted to hold onto those things. But they also wanted other people to have access to those things."

Because highly nostalgic people, she found, tend to be "other-directed."

Their memories and stories are filled with people from their past - coaches, parents, friends. They admire and talk about the people who shaped them. Less nostalgic people, she said, tend toward solo memories and stories - fishing alone, teaching themselves to ride a bike, goals they achieved, to their minds, on their own.

So what does this all have to do with Obama?

"When people are nostalgic, they're nostalgic for the people who made a moment special," Batcho said. "If you're nostalgic for the President Obama time period, you're nostalgic for the people who made it great. And if people made it great once, people can do it again."

Which is, essentially, what Obama emphasized. Except Batcho said nostalgia doesn't undercut that approach. It supports it.

"People who are highly nostalgic have what's called intensity of affect," she said. "They have the capacity to feel emotions very deeply. If they're happy, they can be very happy. If they're sad, they can be very sad."

Which is why nostalgia can be so energizing.

"It can be the fuel," she said, "that helps people act upon things that are desirable or good."

Batcho said if it were up to her, she would add a line to Obama's remarks.

"And if you are nostalgic," she would add, "use that to be inspired and decide, ‘Guess what? This next time, it will be even better.'"

Which fits nicely with another line from Obama's dedication speech that landed like a balm.

"We can learn from the past," he said, "but America's story isn't frozen in the past. It has chapters yet to be written - not by one person or a few people, not by Barack and Michelle, or anybody with a fancy title or a high office - but by all of us."

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This story was originally published June 25, 2026 at 12:53 PM.