Notice what the psalmist actually remembers — not his own better days, his own past successes or comfort, but God's works, what “your hands have done.” The memory that steadies him isn't nostalgia for his own circumstances; it's recollection of God's specific track record. That's a different kind of remembering than most of us default to when things are hard — we usually mourn what we've lost, not deliberately recall what God has done. And the image that follows is visceral: “I thirst for you like a parched land.” Not a mild desire, an actual physical desperation. The remembering doesn't resolve into calm; it resolves into thirst — need becoming sharper, not softer, the more he considers what God has done before.