Why is nostalgia so special?
Many movies paint nostalgia as gone great days, golden period in one’s life. But in reality barring a few instances we may be well off than the past. Advancements in tech, medicine, infrastructure all will have made the life much more easier but there will always be a desire to go to the so called glorious past.
As we grow older, we keep picking only the good memories and ruminate them. For our brain, every read is a write no matter how small is your recollection and every time you remember it will be an updated copy of the original memory. This is one of the reasons time heals a lot of wounds, the more we remember we tend to ignore the negativity associated with it which gets into a cycle of read and write until negativity goes away. Over time we remember only the positive ones so it looks like we had a glorious past.
We also learn to control our amygdala over time so it does not hijack our emotions which also contributes to how we react to images over the past. Amygdala is responsible for flight or fight responses but over time we learn to respond to situations and not react to it. Another reason is we tend to form lot more memories in the earlier stages of our life which was very different every week because of meeting new people, growing up stronger, learning new things, new challenges. Rote work and easy life brings in a sense of boredom that makes us believe older ones are worth memorising compared to the current one.
I think that all these reasons put together makes nostalgia so special that we keep looking for it.
