Memories or Myths !!

"He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past. But when he stood at the railing of the ship... only then did he understand to what extent he had been an easy victim to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia" - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The above-mentioned quote by Gabo fully summarizes the fact  that our brain plays a deceptive game on us so that people,places or things left in the past are fondly remembered by us omitting the painful associations.

For example, now when I am in Lakhimpur, there are only reminiscences i.e. enjoyable recollection of Mumbai and related events.Not that I didn't have pleasant experiences in Bombay.I had my share of both pleasant as well as not-so-good experiences in Mumbai ,like anybody would have,If they stay in any city for a year.But still, why does my mind project my Mumbai experience as a wonderful one now that I have left it ?

Specifically about cities, I have always seen in people that the impression people make of cities is always based on the kind of people they meet when they visit a new city(not for tourism purpose but for wok or something). There was one guy whom I knew and  who had visited Lucknow.On his maiden visit he  met some unhelpful people(read thugs) there and  would always on the mention of Lucknow would start his tirade about how pathetic the city of Lucknow is, without realizing that his whole criticism is based on the assumption that there is nothing else to the city apart from some specific not-so-good people whom he had the misfortune to interact while being there.

There was one Malayali guy working with me in SEBI who once said to me that he thinks people from UP are generally dirty.Such a narrow point of view only based upon on the fact that he had visited Kanpur ten years ago and met some people whom he found unclean/unhygienic/dirty !!!

Based on these examples one would think that I am contradicting my own point.That First impressions are the lasting impressions.

But the case here is different.It is not about some single visit impressions of a city. But what I am talking about is a comprehensive set of memories the kind of which involve your emotions and associations which are slowly developed with the passage of time so that your brain can choose the set of deceptive memories magnifying the good ones and eliminating the bad so that ultimately we end up being nostalgic.

Then why does our brain work this way ? Why can't it plainly present the facts ?

Though I am not a psychologist/psychiatrist(I am not sure to which branch does this question fit in) , but from my experiences and from talking to people,I have come to a conclusion that it is one of the many defensive mechanisms that our brain adopts to soften the picture of the past so that now when we are  trying to scrape through life which at any moment is not that easy, we can find some respite thinking of the "green pastures" (of course an illusion) where we had roamed in the past.

The same reason why people think fondly of their exes forgetting the downs and pinning only on the ups of their relationship.