Smelling Smells

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Smelling Smells

My Most Influential Sense 

Out of all of the senses, I would say that my smell sense has the most influence. As mentioned in "A Natural History of Senses" by Diane Ackerman, olfactory is connected to our memories. When picking through my memories and trying to find the memory I'm looking for, its much easier to do if I smell something I associated with it, than have someone tell me about the memory verbally. Post my traumatic brain injury in 2013, smell has always been the best way for me to connect to the memories I don't consciously remember. 

I have an oil diffuser in my dorm room, as i'm sure some of you also do. I have three oils that I rotate using to make my room smell good: orange citrus, eucalyptus, and "ocean breeze". Ocean Breeze is my favorite because rather than smelling like the salty air I associate with the ocean, it smells like clean, fresh out of the dryer laundry. I was disappointed at first, but grew to love the smell, as it reminds me of home.

The next time I'm in a city like New York or even Boston, and I pass the vendors on the street selling roasted peanuts, I won't automatically remember going to baseball games with my family when I was younger. Now I associate the smell with the memory of being in Denmark and being abroad in general. That will unlock a myriad of emotions and memories that don't necessarily relate to the smell of roasted peanuts, but because the smell of roasted peanuts is a strong connection to Denmark, it'll be the gateway to all of my Denmark memories.

On the contrary, because smell is one of the most influential and strongest of my senses, not only does it connect me to the good memories, but also the painful ones. I'm sure everyone has experienced smelling the perfume or cologne of an ex partner, or getting a whiff of a specific alcohol that reminds you of the last time you drank it and threw up.

Everything has a specific scent. Cities have a specific smell: Hartford smells different than Boston, Boston smells different from New York, New York smells different from Copenhagen. Smells of cities don't bring up memories as much as certain foods or coastal locations, but one of the most powerful emotions come from when I visit cathedrals. Most cathedrals that I've visited always have this heavy scent in the air, almost smokey, from the incense being burned, and it always heightens my experience while I'm visiting. 

Comments

  1. Rosie SteinerMay 1, 2020 at 9:33 AM

    I totally agree with you that smelling things is a much more effective way to remember something! There have been a lot of times when I would remember something I'd forgotten from my childhood just by remembering a certain smell, crazy stuff!

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