Scents

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Scents are a major part of the way we experience our environment ~ although we seem to undervalue their impact. And even when we stop to ‘smell the roses’, chances are that is all we do before we move on to the next thing...
As it turns out, one of the very few scents that we appreciate being in our environment is the smell of roses... Hence the expressions that have to with, yes, the smell of roses.

For the rest we try and control the scents in our environment ~ and there are many of them we bring into our environment; and about as many we try and abandon from our environment ~ or at least mask them. We go through pretty much any length not to smell the ‘natural’ scents of our environment.
We use scented soap or shower gel, scented deodorant, and perhaps ‘eau de toilette’ or perfume to mask our own unique scent. We use scented fabric softener. And air fresheners don’t bring in any fresh air as the name suggests ~ they bring a certain scent into our space.

And yet, no matter how hard we try to control the way we smell or the smell of our direct environment ~ no matter how hard we try not to smell anything other than the freshness we bring into our space ~ most significant events and places in our lives are tied to the scents that were in the air at the time they took place. And often that very smell, or a scent very close to it, can trigger the memory of such an event or place to be brought back into our consciousness swiftly and effectively. We may not even have been aware of whatever it was we smelled at the time ~ yet as we smell that scent again it takes us back through time to see that event ‘as if it happened yesterday’.

The funny thing is that how we consciously relate to the scent doesn’t have anything to say about the memory. The somewhat foul odor of a meat market in a tropical country can be related to a happy memory, just as the sweet smell of a particular blossom or flower can be related to a traumatic event. At least as our memories are concerned, the sweetness of the scent has no bearing on the sweet or bitter taste of the event at the time.

However, once we have made that conscious (as opposed to subconscious) connection between that particular scent and the event or place ~ it can bring about a yearning to be back in that place. To return to that very environment with that specific scent which holds the key to that special memory, that story, that state of being we once knew...
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