A simple exercise in self-awareness that could change how you understand yourself
Close your eyes for a moment and think of a memory from childhood that fills you with a deep, almost magical sense of meaning. Perhaps it's your grandmother's kitchen on a Sunday morning, the sound of rain on your bedroom window, or the way afternoon light fell across your school playground. Notice how that memory isn’t just a recollection of the past—it carries something more profound; an almost mystical quality that feels both wonderful and somehow unreachable.
What you're experiencing isn't simply nostalgia. You're witnessing a fundamental force of human psychology in action—one that has been shaping your desires, emotions, and life choices since you were small, yet remains largely unrecognised.
The Mystery Behind Your Most Meaningful Moments
That sense of inexplicable specialness you just felt? It has a name: hagioptasia (pronounced 'Hag-ee-op-TAY-see-uh'), meaning 'holy vision'. It's your mind's natural tendency to perceive certain people, places, objects, or thoughts as possessing an otherworldly quality of significance—as if they're touched by something transcendent.
Here's what makes this discovery so remarkable: while many of your experiences of hagioptasia relate to your childhood, it isn't only about the past. It's a perceptual mechanism that's actively working right now, transforming ordinary experiences into sources of profound meaning. Your nostalgic memories are simply the easiest place to observe it in action.
A Simple Test: Watching Your Mind Create Magic
Try this revealing exercise:
Step 1: Think of three specific childhood memories that feel especially meaningful or "magical" to you. Not just happy memories, but ones that seem to glow with significance.
Step 2: Now ask yourself honestly: Were these moments actually extraordinary when they happened? Or were they fairly ordinary experiences that have somehow acquired a deep sense of specialness over time?
Step 3: Notice the paradox: You can intellectually recognise that these were probably quite mundane moments (a typical Tuesday afternoon, an unremarkable conversation, playing in a garden), yet they continue to feel profoundly special despite this rational understanding.
This is hagioptasia at work. Your mind has taken ordinary experiences and imbued them with a quality of "specialness" that feels completely real and external—as if the magic exists in the actual place or event, rather than being created by your perception.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
Once you learn to recognise hagioptasia in your nostalgic memories, you'll start seeing it everywhere:
That inexplicable allure of celebrities and status symbols
The way certain places (a favorite café, a scenic viewpoint) seem to possess an almost sacred atmosphere
Your attraction to vintage items, heirloom objects, or things with "history"
The transcendent quality you perceive in music, art, or literature that moves you so deeply
This isn't mere sentimentality or cultural conditioning. Research involving nearly 3,000 people has shown that around 80% of us experience this perceptual tendency from early childhood. It's a fundamental feature of human psychology, rooted in our evolutionary heritage.
The Evolutionary Story Hidden in Your Feelings
Why would our minds be wired this way? The answer lies deep in our evolutionary past. Hagioptasia likely evolved as a sophisticated guidance system—a way of marking certain experiences, places, and relationships as significant and worth returning to or seeking out.
Consider how your nostalgic feelings often center around:
Your childhood home and family
Seasonal celebrations and traditions
Moments of safety, comfort, and belonging
But hagioptasia also extends to social dynamics in ways that mirror other species. Just as male deer are instinctively drawn to impressive antler displays, or peahens respond to elaborate tail feathers, humans automatically perceive “specialness” in high-status individuals—celebrities, leaders, successful peers. This same mechanism that makes childhood memories glow with meaning also drives hero worship, status anxiety, and competitive envy.
These patterns aren't random. They represent exactly the kinds of experiences and social perceptions that would have enhanced survival and wellbeing for our ancestors. The sense of ‘specialness’ was evolution's way of saying: “Pay attention to this. Value this. Seek more of this—whether it's a safe haven or a powerful ally.”
The Double-Edged Gift
Understanding hagioptasia reveals both its benefits and its potential pitfalls:
The Gift: This mechanism allows us to find profound meaning and beauty in ordinary life. It's the source of our deepest aesthetic experiences, our capacity for awe, and our ability to form lasting emotional bonds with places and people.
The Challenge: Because hagioptasia operates automatically and feels completely real, we often mistake its effects for external truth. We chase after things—careers, possessions, relationships, experiences—believing they possess the specialness we perceive, only to find ourselves disappointed when reality doesn't match our hagioptasic expectations.
A Path to Wiser Living
Here's the transformative insight: Recognising hagioptasia doesn't diminish the beauty of your experiences—it enhances your agency in creating them.
Before awareness: “I need to recapture that magical feeling from my past” or “If I could just achieve [goal], I'd have that sense of specialness in my life”.
After awareness: “I have a natural capacity to perceive specialness, and I can cultivate this in my present experience rather than chasing illusions”.
This shift is profound. Instead of viewing your current life as somehow lacking compared to an idealised past or future, you can recognise that the source of magic was always within your own perception. The song of a blackbird in your garden today is just as worthy of that sense of wonder as any blackbird from your childhood—if you allow yourself to see it.
Practical Steps to Harness Your Hagioptasia
Practice Present-Moment Awareness: When you catch yourself feeling nostalgic, ask: “What would it be like to experience this same quality of specialness right now, in this moment?”
Question Your Pursuits: Before making life decisions motivated by a sense that something will bring you that elusive “special” feeling, pause and consider whether you're chasing a hagioptasic projection.
Cultivate Gratitude for the Ordinary: Deliberately practice seeing the ‘specialness’ in everyday experiences—your morning coffee, a conversation with a friend, the quality of light in your room.
Recognise Cultural Manipulation: Notice how advertising, social media, and status cultures exploit your hagioptasic tendencies by promising that their products or lifestyles will deliver that sense of specialness.
The Deeper Invitation
Understanding hagioptasia isn't about becoming cynical or losing your sense of wonder. Quite the opposite. It's about reclaiming your power to experience meaning and beauty on your own terms, rather than being unconsciously driven by ancient psychological mechanisms or cultural forces seeking to exploit them.
Your nostalgic memories have been trying to teach you something important all along: You possess a remarkable capacity to perceive the extraordinary in the ordinary. The question isn't whether this capacity is “real” or “illusory”—it's how you'll choose to use it.
Will you spend your life chasing after projections of specialness that exist mainly in your perception? Or will you learn to consciously cultivate that same sense of wonder and meaning in your actual, present-moment experience?
The choice, as always, is yours. But now, at least, it's a conscious one.
Source: A simple exercise in self-awareness that could change how you understand yourself
