A closer look
You can actively mourn the loss of a moment while you are still aggressively living in it. Anticipatory nostalgia hits hardest during major life transitions, like the final weeks of university. Instead of enjoying a final party, your brain forcefully rips you out of the present and makes you look at the event from an imaginary future where it's already gone. It's a bittersweet psychological glitch that ruins perfectly good moments by prematurely burying them in a casket of preemptive grief.
