Have you ever wondered what gets us to gather here, or at any other place, to share our thoughts? What is the intention before the motion of our mind and body kicks in?
It would be too naive to claim that the motive is our individual visibility. That would be the very surface, shallow waters of a more complex coastline. Is there any difference between being a published author and a prehistoric campfire conversation these first humans had? Do we exist through the exchange of thoughts more than in any other form of matter? And what is a thought, in the first place — where does it come from, and who is the actual owner of thought? Are thoughts ours, or are they bite-sized chunks of endless Divine wisdom, a memory of past existences that comes alive through us, a frequency modulated by our instrument, codified to be felt and recognised by the ones who need it the most?
I was born in Zelenika, a tiny coastal village along the shores of the Bay of Boka Kotorska in Montenegro. Zelenika is a wonder, an incident of a sort, a living testament to how far humans can go in ruining the crown jewel of natural beauty. A century ago, it was the last station of a railroad connecting the inland and the sea — a tiny port for tall ships, stacks of warehouses for commodities, working-class housing, a logistical heaven unburdened with thoughts of aesthetics and Beauty. Decades later, communism, brutalism, and social realism did not help it morph into a butterfly. They only emphasised the weird mashup of every idea, a glimpse of style, assembled randomly to form a place for humans to live and interact. And, for most of my life, I had this feeling of being an alien in the place of my birth. Ever since I was a child, I felt like an odd number, a misfit, a bowl of energy stork dropped there by mistake. But — in contrast to this feeling of being in the wrong place and wrong time, there was an amazing amount of love within me. For my family, my ancestors, my roots, for the people of Zelenika, of Boka Bay, friends, relatives… as if, by the very design, the contrast was helping me, all along the way, to break out of the cocoon into what I was supposed to become. Eventually.
My relationship with Zelenika was on and off. Living abroad for the most part of my life, coming back for summers to spill the beans of wisdom, believing I was made of different matter — high on success, vain and ready to show how far one can come when he is not trapped by the mentality and mindsets of a small people and a small place. My mind, as it often goes, played one tune, while my soul was loving every bit of Zelenika. Every imperfection. Every human being who walked there. What my soul loved most was a very particular genius loci, a mentality that lives in and for a constant joke. Every thought of your average inhabitant of Zelenika runs on this frequency of laughter. The background of the consciousness of Zelenika, the operating system on top of which everything else runs, is humour. And, funnily enough, while my ego was fighting Zelenika all the time — and the hardships of growing up without exposure to the benefits of big city lights — everything else in me loved it.
It was not until two years ago that I began to understand the deeper meaning of Zelenika in my life. We came to see my parents for a brief winter visit. As we usually split the time between Zelenika and Dobrota — another, this time lovely, place in the Bay, my wife's birthplace — that time we stayed in Zelenika first. I was deeply disturbed and annoyed by the weather, the traffic, the people, and the celebrations. Or so it appeared — these were merely triggers. I was ranting all the time.
But on the deeper level of being, of thought and existence, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia. With melancholy. Ultimately, with endless sadness. I felt like crying all the time, with no apparent reason. We were good. We were happy. My parents were alive and in good shape. My brother's family was amazing. We were all there — I should have been rocking wild. But this ugly nostalgia was tearing me apart. I tried all possible tricks I had at that time, focusing on all sorts of things to break this spell of discomfort in my soul. Praying, walking, laughing, meditating, reading, not doing anything — this only made it worse — to no avail. Then I went deeper down the rabbit hole of thoughts, figuring I was your average coastal guy, fueled by melancholy and, God forbid, depression.
And lastly, in bed, while everyone else was sleeping, I gave in. I cried my heart out. I saw my dad's last days, my mum's last days, my childhood, and my grandparents. I saw myself old, my kids all over the place, far and away. I hoped I would die first, because there was no chance I could picture my wife logging off from this world before me. This nostalgia had a rather mean way of pulling out every single idea I was emotionally attached to, all at once — I could not figure out why, or what the point of this torture was. I cried, and I cried. And ultimately, shirt wet with tears, I expected this episode to be over. "When I wake up tomorrow, I will be okay. I've let the feelings run through me, like a thunderstorm — all sun and roses tomorrow". I hoped.
We woke in the morning, all of us up and ready to leave for Dobrota to visit Sashka's parents. And, as I was back then, I would ignore my soul's call and push through the barrier to please everyone. I would just follow the task and be happy—for everyone else, and only then for myself. But that morning — or it was the night before, it does not matter — a different Mitar was there. New software had been installed over-the-air during the night, new drivers for upgraded performance, calibrated to get me to think less and feel more.
"Love… I need to stay here. I don't know why, I just know I have to," I said calmly to my wife.
"I knew you'd say this. No worries, babe, I'll take the kids and go see my folks. Come whenever you can. Do what you need to do." Intuitive as she was, she sensed the change within me. Her calmness, on top of my newly acquired peace, was soothing.
"I need to go out," I said. "This nostalgia is killing me."
It was a brisk morning. The north wind had settled into a slight breeze; the sea was that very particular shade of deep blue—only after the storm can one experience such depth; the air was pure and energising, with clear skies and no clouds. I took a thick winter jacket, crossed the road in front of our house, walked just thirty meters more, and sat on the bench next to the small pier my grandfather had built in the late 1950s. Moored there, a small wooden boat — another of his creations — swung peacefully. I grew up in that boat, sunbathing and jumping off that pier. I had spent days and nights on that very bench, on that very shore, taking in the same view. The energy streamed through me, top down, giving me chills and goosebumps. "God damn it with this sadness," I cursed it out. There was no one around. I was alone on this bench of my childhood, memories flooding like a wild river. And the more I let them flow through me, the more I sensed — I felt, just slightly to my left — a presence of my grandfather. I did not give it much notice at that point. I simply became aware of this sensation. And there I was, the entrance to the Bay of Boka looked magnificent, radiating splendour, sea gulls roaming the skies, like a wreck of a guy weeping on the bench.
I could barely take it any longer. The feelings were just too much for me to handle, so I decided to give myself a hardware reset and head for a walk along the coastline, towards a lovely marina and resort down the road. As my mind started to settle in, with feelings still streaming through me — a mix of nostalgia, melancholy, and sadness — I realised that none of it was mine. I am a happy guy. Optimistic. Brimming with energy. A lightning bolt that raises the vibration with every step. I stood alone with my thoughts, and the fact that none of it was mine struck me like waking from a dream in the middle of the night — a punch of sudden, sharp, startling clarity.
"God, this is strange," I thought, and continued the walk. Shortly after, I got to the resort and went for a terrace overlooking the shore and the tiny pier in the distance — the point I had set out from. The boat, the pier, the bench — a singular memory pack of this trinity echoed so deeply within my soul. I had a coffee and just sat there in silence. Again, there was no one around — the emptiness shielded me and gave me a space to contemplate. I was trying not to think but to feel what had been going on since the moment I set foot back home. I was certain of one thing — none of these strong feelings and sensations were actually mine. The phone rang. My mum was calling me back home to a family lunch. A few messages from friends, and one deeply caring how are you from my wife.
"I'll be okay. On my way home, everyone's waiting for me. Call you soon," I replied. There, with a phone in my hand, I drafted a single line in my notes:
This pier, a place to set the sadness free. Sand dust on the seabed, fragments of past souls. Not to be lost — close, yet away. It's a day for a tiny ritual.
It felt like a signal, piercing through the noise of painful feelings and vibrations that shook my body. I did not yet know what to do with this message, but I had at least a clearer direction. On my way back towards the pier and home, I was passing by the little beach — a place where mum and dad had taken us almost every day, each summer, where I grew tall, fell in love with life itself. As if this day was that day for me, to fall in love again, this time with something or someone else. I went all the way to the end of the beach, where I used to build sandcastles as a child, and where I remembered the softest sand grains lay. I dipped my hand in, picked up a handful of sand, and closed my palm.
"There," I thought, "now I know what to do next." My inner child woke up, pushing through the waterfalls of nostalgia, and flipped the invisible switch. As I walked past the palm trees, my mind was set on having it done — this contract with whoever it was that had been peeling my defences like onion skin would be fulfilled today. And I stepped forward, more and more certain of the signal I was receiving. I took a few steps down the staircase and came all the way to the end of the pier, facing the sea. The grandpa's boat was singing that tune of old sun-drenched wood crackles, together with gentle coastal waves. I looked at it, then looked at the rocky bottom of the sea through the crystal-clear waters, raised my palm with the sand, and started releasing the grains ever so gently, rubbing my fingers against each other, and watched them pause briefly on the surface of the water before easily sinking to the bottom. I asked whoever carried this nostalgia, this sadness that had run through me, to take it back. I had done my part. I had felt it strongly, I had lived it for so many years, and now it was time for it to go home. I promised the sand would sit as a mark, there just a few inches off the shore and pier, so that we would know where it lay, forever. It was never going to be lost — but I would need not to carry it again, on someone else's behalf. I knew, at that moment, whose sorrow it was. And I knew why I had been the chosen one to channel it.
And I wept, once more — this time of joy. For the blessing of guidance, for the clarity of the signal, for the gratitude of being the one who received the honour to feel and act upon that feeling. I gave thanks to God, to my ancestors, to my guides, to this life, to everyone around me. And quietly, almost without noticing, I thanked the nostalgia itself — for it had moved me, broken me open, and led me exactly where I needed to be.
A few days later, upon my return to Belgrade, I met one of my guides — a spiritual counsellor I had been seeing — at her practice. I sat on the chair across from her and told her, to the word, what had happened. She was crying, holding her arms the same way I had held mine, covering her face, hiding from everyone, regardless of the fact that there had not been a single person around me.
"It was your grandfather. You know this," she said.
"I know. I knew it back there. I just wanted to see you and make sure. This is a real blessing…"
"It is. You did right, Mitar. He wanted to sit there, once more — the wish that his soul carried home when he passed."
"I felt so," I continued. "I felt enormous relief right there… and I was happy, for I knew he was happy. He was happy for both of us."
"He was, and still is," she smiled gently.
It was on that day that I fell in love again. This time, with Zelenika. With my birthplace. With the clarity and precision with which the Heavens operate. With this tiny little coastal village of two thousand people, who share the incredible talent of making everyday mundane life into the most hilarious comedic show anyone could experience. I fell in love with every bit of my life — past, present and future. The gratitude only grew stronger from then on, as my ability to cut through the mind's noise and follow the heart's signals grew. Zelenika was finally integrated into my being.
But something remained from that day, something that stayed with me ever since. An idea, a question — what is this complex set of feelings that we identify as nostalgia? Why does it exist in the first place? Where does it come from? And as this wonder stayed with me, I continued the quest for those answers. I read a lot, picking up lines and passages, bit by bit of a much larger mosaic, and a few years later, it finally started to make sense. The image the mosaic bits were forming grew clearer and clearer each day, until it finally hit me—the meaning and purpose of nostalgia suddenly made perfect sense.
Are we genuinely nostalgic for the old ages, for the times and memories from our childhood? As if those were the only times we were happy? Or are we nostalgically longing for our birthplaces, that might — like in my case — have little to nothing to offer, or offer it in a manner that is hardly comprehensible when we are children and adolescents? I know many people who have spent their lifetimes away from their places of origin, yet almost all of them yearn for their homeland and are sworn to, if nothing else, be buried back home, returned to their home turf. I dug, but all of these notions appeared too obvious, a surface layer. I felt there had to be a deeper meaning, a reason why the Creator of everything visible and invisible around us had put nostalgia in motion.
Yes. Motion.
See — motion, dynamics, the force that gets all aspects of life going. The life-force itself.
So I thought: there is this existential aspect of nostalgia, this almost-authoritarian call for return, that helps expand knowledge and preserve the species from extinction. The evolutionary dimension of this drive that forces us to return and share freshly acquired knowledge or experience. One has to offload what is gained — never mind at what point in life one might be — it is a given, a mandatory function woven into the system architecture of existence. Take an ancient tribe as an example: one of them goes rogue, follows the gut, goes away, drifts, gets into all sorts of trouble, learns how to survive, even finds a new source of food along the way, and as soon as she or he has completed the quest, the impossible urge to offload the knowledge kicks in. What one wants most is to come back home and share, to help individual data become part of the collective information pool. And this is all fine, understandable, plain obvious. We all have this, on the deeply instinctive, hardwired level. I had it, too —I wanted to bring my specific knowledge back home and share it with my people, and I still have it, probably will have it forever. As in the great Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, we all live this Monomyth, over and over again, in and out of life — a single storyline in the history of humankind.
And this is, perhaps, the answer to the questions at the very beginning of this story. We flock, we gather, we share everything our consciousness deems worthy of sharing. We firmly feel and believe that what we hold — a vibration, an insight, a kernel of love, an inspiration — will do good to our fellow humans. That it will help them push through, make them laugh, and console them. The motion, the act of releasing this energy outwards, is its own reward.
And this concept worked for me — I was quite happy how everything clicked in my mind, why we live to share, and why it is wired into such a potent and universal mechanism as what we have defined as nostalgia.
But a trace of doubt remained within me — a suspicion that what I understood as a mechanism was still the surface. What if this Monomyth, regardless of the fact that it perfectly fits us humans, serves something far greater than humankind? It appeared very simplistic to me that the only reason for deploying such a strong force was to bring people back to their tribe to share and push forward. The feeling was so strong that some people died of nostalgia — such a hard drive it is. And there, one night, again, during summer stargazing in Boka, I finally cracked it. The Monomyth, Odysseus, the Apostles — every single story there is, is a story of a soul's journey. Only the soul can render such a powerful force within us. And if this idea were correct, where exactly do the souls come from? And where exactly do they go back? As was usual in this phase of my life, every time I dug for an answer — driven deep enough by my heart's longing, not my mind's curiosity — the answer would miraculously appear. And so it did.
One sleepless night, I stumbled upon the portal of Ivan Antić, a Serbian author and researcher whose work illuminated what I had been circling around for years. He explained that the soul's birth occurs the moment it embarks on the journey of self-discovery, separating itself from the Source and donning the Ego. The journey of the Illusion of Individualisation — travelling through so many stories, lives, experiences, time and again, millions of cycles, until it collects all the dots of the mosaic and sees the only image there is to see: that the soul is One with everything and everyone. And once the soul sees it, it yearns to return.
And there it was — the missing piece, the one I had to find on my own. What drives the soul to go on, regardless of the hardships encountered along the way? What is this relentless force that pulls it forward through millions of lives, towards the Source it once left behind? The very same force that brought me to my knees on that pier in Zelenika, the very same ache that has moved every Odysseus homeward since the beginning of time — is the soul's longing to return. Nostalgia.
Everything we do happens for a reason. We expand our file system, collect experiences, and wrap them in packages to return to the sender once the voyage is finally over. Whatever we do, whatever our push in this life is — to get somewhere, achieve something — reaching the heights of international glory, or inner enlightenment, even writing this story, however it may sound to you now, is driven by nostalgia — the strongest force in the universe.
It gets us going against all odds, yearning to fulfil our Path, so that, when the time is right, we remember where we came from — ready for the longing itself to take us back. Home.