Our senses are tightly linked to memory in both fleeting and powerful ways.
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You can sit and try to memorize things from a sheet of paper all you want, but it will never beat out the power that comes from the senses and remembering things.
There are very few things that are stranger than walking past someone wearing your significant other’s cologne or perfume. The way your grandmother used vinegar and fatback in green beans can send you straight back to childhood in the south. The smell in the air on a certain fall morning can give you the first day of school jitters even though you haven’t been in years. The fleeting scent of honeysuckle can send you right back to a former home. A particular computer sound will remind you of your years in a different career.
Sometimes things that trigger the memory from the senses can be fleeting — just enough to make you pause for a moment and then move on — or they can knock you off your feet and revive long since buried seasons of your life.
Have you ever had this experience? Did the right scent trigger a sweet memory of an old love? Or the wrong song you haven’t heard in years bring up memories of an old prom date? Or some perfect spice trigger childhood feelings and bliss in a particular entree?
The Good Life wants your articles and stories about the five senses and how they are linked to memories. We are looking for written submissions that are roughly 700-2,000 words in length. Send your ideas and drafts to Deanna Ogle at [email protected]. Final submissions must be received by Wednesday, July 31 to be considered for inclusion in the upcoming series. For questions and further guidelines, email Deanna.
Read more Calls For Submissions on The Good Life.
Photo credit: Flickr / shivganesh
Sights, sounds, smells ,tastes even the texture of something our the way it feels in your hands or on your skin . It matters not if you have forgotten the event, the senses will, nit can, will sooner or later trigger that particular memory to surface. Once surfaced it had the potential of either great warmth or harm, an emotional response or a physical or, mental one. It can trigger the fight our flight responder, give you a panic attack, anxiety, embarrassment, anger, happiness. The older one is it seems the more a forgotten memory brought out by some sensory… Read more »