One key to happiness ... never look back.
Don't indulge in nostalgia, in missing a certain person or a set of people or in missing certain situations and you will be happy. I am using the word indulge here as nostalgia is something which can be easily avoided but is played around with only because it supposedly gives one satisfaction. It is masochism at its worst! It involves giving oneself pleasure by looking back into the past at incidents which were fun once but which in turn makes the present miserable and partially enjoyable at the same time.
Trying to extract happiness from memories is just not possible. Memories are just images of something that isn't real anymore. The memory is real but the event is not. It is an image. Just as an image of food can't satisfy one's hunger (for long), similarly a memory can't keep me happy for long (for that matter even food or the event can't make me happy but I am leaving that aside for now).
Nostalgia is just like being at the movies. Both involve forgetting the "real" world for a few minutes/hours and enjoying the "dream" world. But at the end of both the truth remains that the "real" world is all I have and absolutely nothing from the "dream" world.
Instead, being in present and accepting it (not being nostalgic) is a sure-shot way to being happy.
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