MediumAbstract
"I am a longing for a time that may never have been quite as good as I remember. I make the past warmer than it was. I am a kind of beautiful sadness. What am I?"
Answer
Nostalgia
Explanation
Nostalgia is the bittersweet longing for the past. Research shows that nostalgic memories are often idealised — we remember the good and filter out the bad. It produces a curious mixture of happiness and sadness.
This is a medium riddle in the Abstract category — Riddles about ideas, emotions, and intangible things.
Featured in: Riddles for Adults
Tags:emotionsabstractphilosophy
✦
More Abstract Riddles
Keep going — other riddles in this category:
- I am the ability to feel what another person feels. I require imagination as well as feeling. I am what separates compassion from pity. What am I?
- I am the emotion that lives permanently in the past. I change nothing yet I am one of the strongest motivators. The things that cause me most are usually the things we did not do. What am I?
- I am the feeling that drives both science and art. I am what a child feels at their first snowfall. I require that you do not already know the answer. What am I?
- I am the deadliest of the seven deadly sins yet I feel like a virtue. A little of me is healthy; too much of me destroys. I come before a fall. What am I?
- I am bigger than any number you can name, yet some of me are bigger than others. I am not a number yet mathematicians work with me every day. What am I?
- I can start a war or end one. I can heal a wound that no medicine can touch. I cannot be unsaid. Billions of me are spoken every minute. What am I?