Sentimental over spacetime projections

[mtbc]

Yesterday I caught myself thinking that my mother both could and might like to visit the room in which her late parents first met. I then wondered, how does that make any sense? She wasn't there so it doesn't trigger that memory and it is not the kind of event where going to that same place decades later is usefully informative. Last fall I had thought of the Roman army under Septimius Severus as from a high vantage point I looked out over where I think they once were. More personally, it is strange for me to have my late father's overcoat; I have yet to wear it. Without him it is just a coat. Humans are strange things.

This kind of associative thinking goes beyond simple nostalgia in which one reexperiences something reminiscent of simpler, happier times. Perhaps it underlies why the superstitious may believe that there is power in acquiring locks of hair or making voodoo dolls or whatever. Still, it may at least usefully encourage one to imagine oneself in others' shoes.