As fireworks burst over Cinderella’s castle, Tinker Bell traced a perfect arc of fairy dust across the screen. The Disney logo shimmered to life as the all–too–familiar orchestra swelled, careening off the cinder block walls of our windowless freshman dorm room — affectionately nicknamed “the dungeon”. The brown tweed couch sagged beneath the weight of our nostalgic hearts as four 18-year-old girls belted out the opening lyrics of “The Lion King” in imperfect harmony.
I’ve always been labeled an “old soul”. I’ll take a steaming cup of peppermint tea, a crisp hardback novel and a weighted blanket over an open party any night. If you’ve seen “Inside Out 2”, the character Nostalgia gives you a pretty accurate picture of me. Still, within my first few weeks as a baby–faced freshman, I realized I wasn’t the only one longing for the past. Every student I met was mysteriously struck with the same infectious disease — nostalgia. Three years later, doctors still haven’t found a cure.
Almost every night, without fail, my roommates and I click on the TV, scroll through the slew of streaming services and land on something pre-2015. Our decisions are rarely strategic and almost always begin with: “You’ve never seen this?” or “Oh, this was my favorite movie as a kid!” Instead of the newest releases, we chose the familiar. The predictable. The safe. For 90 minutes, we trade adult life for animated simplicity.
Between flooded freshman washing machines, five–point grade scales and figuring out what “business casual” actually means, this routine became our anchor. Amid so much newness, I could count on the old. For a little while, I wasn’t the girl with a botched student ID and a minimum-wage job, I was just the kid who cried when Mufasa died.
But those first nights, the laughter quieted. Sitting in our closet-sized rooms, staring at unfamiliar walls command stripped with familiar pictures, we realized something gut-deep: our childhood had ended. We couldn’t reverse back over the spiked speed bump. No more walking into rooms where everyone knew our middle names or listened to our post–breakup rants. In two U-Hauls and 14 Walmart runs, we had traded the familiar for the foreign — and somewhere along the way, we started grieving.
College urges us to hurry and grow up, move on and don’t look back. But looking back isn’t weakness, it’s an act of faithfulness. Watching the movies that shaped us doesn’t make us childish, it reminds us of the innocence and wonder God first placed in us. Maturity isn’t about outgrowing that childlike heart, but stewarding it and choosing to move forward with childlike joy.
So, we return to what we know. We jump into chalk street art with Mary Poppins, race through Radiator Springs with Lightning McQueen, scheme with Annie and Hallie and root for Woody and Buzz. For a couple hours, we are home again — the world shrinks back into something we can hold. We crave the unmuddied simplicity of childhood: good versus evil, friendship that never fractures and a guaranteed happy ending.
The funny thing is, some of our most beloved movies aren’t even objectively “good” by the world’s standards. The CGI looks uncanny, jokes don’t quite land and the acting makes you cringe. But it doesn’t matter. Because we’re not watching for cinematic brilliance or perfection; we’re watching for belonging. When I hear the lilting French of “Beauty and the Beast” or the opening hum of “Finding Nemo”, something inside me exhales. Those sounds hold memories of popsicle–stained pajamas and living room floors littered with Legos — and they remind me that the girl I used to be isn’t gone, she’s just grown.
That’s why we’re able to rewatch these films endlessly, even though we can recite them line for line. They don’t surprise us anymore; they steady us. They offer reliability and stability in a season defined by uncertainty and change. They whisper that the world can still make sense, that good still wins and that home isn’t so far away after all.
Maybe nostalgia is a kind of grace, a gentle reminder that our longing for permanence isn’t misplaced. It’s proof that we were made for something enduring, something that doesn’t shift with semesters or zip codes. When we ache for the constancy of Saturday morning cartoons or the predictability of a happily–ever–after, maybe what we’re really longing for is Heaven — a home where good truly does reign, and where the story never ends.
As the credits roll and the TV flickers to black, the dorm room feels softer somehow. We pass around microwaved popcorn and melting ice cream pints, eyes heavy but hearts settled. Growing up doesn’t mean obliterating childhood. Maybe it means learning how to grieve it — and then, when we’re ready, pressing play again.
