Saudade

Saudade: A longing for something that will never return.

There are emotions that arrive without knocking. A familiar song begins playing, the smell of rain rises from the earth, an old photograph appears on our phone, or we pass a street we have not seen in years, and suddenly we are somewhere else.

That feeling has a beautiful Portuguese name: "Saudade". We have all known it.

It may be the memory of a father’s voice, a mother’s kitchen, a schoolteacher who believed in us when we did not believe in ourselves, or a friend whose laughter still seems strangely alive in our memory. It may be a sibling we grew up fighting with and loving fiercely, a grandparent’s house that no longer exists, or a relative whose chair at the dining table has been empty for years.

Sometimes it is something far smaller.

A school bell. The smell of a new textbook. The taste of a particular sweet bought after an examination. The excitement of waiting outside a cinema as a child. A holiday when the family travelled together, before everyone became busy with separate lives. A concert where we sang along with thousands of strangers and, for a few hours, felt wonderfully anonymous and completely alive.

It can be a train journey and the stranger sitting opposite us who said something kind. A surprise evening that turned into an unforgettable night. A colleague's joke from twenty years ago. An old photograph that reminds us not merely of the people in it, but of the person we were when that photograph was taken.

And then there are songs.

How extraordinary that a few opening notes can dismantle the walls of decades. An old film song can suddenly return us to a theatre, a particular afternoon, a first crush, a childhood friendship, or the feeling of sitting beside someone who is no longer here. For a few seconds, time becomes porous. The past slips quietly into the present.

Even a simple notification can do it. An old social media post, a photograph, or a kind comment someone once left can remind us of a moment when we felt seen, appreciated or happy. We smile, perhaps even laugh, and then comes that little ache because we know we cannot quite return there.

That is the strange power of memory.

It does not merely remember events. It remembers how we felt. And feelings have remarkably long memories.

A place can trigger longing. A smell can summon a person. A taste can resurrect a celebration. A photograph can bring back an entire season of life. A familiar road can make us remember the person who once travelled it with us. Even silence can become a doorway to something we thought we had forgotten.

Perhaps the deepest saudade comes from knowing that some experiences are permanently beyond our reach. We cannot revisit our childhood exactly as it was. We cannot sit again in that classroom with those particular classmates. We cannot attend that concert for the first time again. We cannot have one more ordinary evening with someone who has passed away. We cannot return to the version of ourselves who lived those moments without knowing how precious they would eventually become.

And perhaps that is why nostalgia can be so intoxicating.

We romanticise the past not because everything about it was perfect, but because memory has a curious way of polishing the edges. The difficult days fade into the background while the warmth remains. We remember the laughter more readily than the arguments, the journey more than the inconvenience, the togetherness more than the troubles.

Even something as collective as Covid can awaken saudade: longing for crowded streets, spontaneous travel, family gatherings, handshakes, celebrations, restaurants full of people and a world in which tomorrow did not feel uncertain.

Saudade can therefore be both uplifting and depressing. It can break the heart and warm it at the same time. That is precisely why we should not resist it.

Perhaps we should occasionally allow ourselves to linger there, to revisit the old photographs, listen to the old songs, remember the people, smile at the foolishness of our younger selves and allow the memories to wash over us. Because nostalgia is not necessarily a desire to live in the past.

Sometimes it is simply gratitude wearing the clothes of longing. 

It reminds us that we have lived, loved, travelled, laughed, lost, celebrated and belonged. It tells us that certain people, places and moments mattered enough to leave an imprint on us.

And perhaps that is the most beautiful paradox of saudade: we ache because we cannot go back, yet we are grateful that we were there in the first place.

Memory reaches backwards, not always to imprison us in yesterday, but sometimes to whisper something into today: You have known beautiful things before. You can create beautiful things again.

There is no escape from saudade. It can find us at work, at home, while travelling, watching a movie, listening to music, standing in a familiar place or simply waiting for something to happen.

It always arrives suddenly, silently, and unannounced. And when it does, perhaps we should not push it away. 

Let it stir the heart.

Let it hurt a little.

Let it make us smile.

Saudade is the beautiful pain of remembering what once made us whole, knowing that no longing can ever take us back there. For somewhere between the ache and the joy lies one of life's most human truths: we remember because we cared, and we long because we loved. It is a wound of memory, where love keeps alive what life has made impossible to revisit.

For me, Saudade is the heart remembering what time has taken away, and discovering that some things are most alive precisely because they can never return.