Scents, Sounds, and Ceremonies: Memory Making

The field of flowers …sunlight & salty air … sounds of kids playing … the weird dude awkwardly watching us as his family tried to coax him away.

I remember it all. 

I’d like to pass along some advice (sometimes an instinct from within) about memory. One of my best friends, Tyra, officiated our wedding. In the midst of the ceremony she asked us all to pause, and take in the moment … listen to it, smell it, watch it. When was the last time you “sensed” your life?

Instinctually, every now and again, the same advice has come from within … most often around my dog. Little Dude, was the most resilient creature I’ve known, never having a bad day in his life … and not a lot of healthy ones either. In my head I didn’t want it to be, but in my heart I always knew we’d have fewer days with him than we’d like. (Isn’t that always the case though?) 

His first overnight veterinarian stay was when he was eight months old - we still don’t know what happened there. When he was four he endured some sort of blood infection that almost took him. The same year he had his first of ten rounds of pancreatitis. A few years ago he started having seizures, and just a couple months back he passed from complications due to congestive heart failure and a collapsing trachea.

So … yeah …

My memories of him are so strong. He was an important tether in many of my life-stories (including the wedding - best man status). I still tear up (even as I write this) because my recall of him is so vivid due to the fact I’d often … smell him. I lived knowing our time together was gifted, and so I’d regularly hold him close, put my nose to his fur, and just breathe him … like fresh baked bread … or rain showers. The day he was to pass I spent a lot of time looking into his eyes, listening, and especially breathing.

m e m o r i z i n g  

If I close my eyes and picture him, then enjoy a slow deep breathe, for a moment my mind forgets he’s gone. It’s bittersweet.

When I hear the sound of children playing I can similarly close my eyes and take myself back to our ceremony … Golden Gate Bridge … picnic blanket … and hands holding … the three of us: Me, Husband, and Little Dude at a happy time. 

Memory is a funny thing: emotions and stories playing in loops out of sequential time, coming and going as they please. 

I could point you to a lot of fancy science about neural synaptic tagging & capture, and hippocampal dopamine release - the science of it all - but instead let’s just stay in the wonder of human experience. How, for better or worse, we have the ability to remember back to and look forward toward life, and our stories. Some stories stir up pleasure and some bring forth pain, but really they’re crafted movies playing in our minds. 

Understanding that arousal and sensation deeply capture and encode memories is a useful life tool - for understanding why it’s difficult to forget the things you’d rather … and as a way to nurture memories you’d like to hold on to. The ability to acknowledge the mind-movie for what it is … well, that takes a dedicated mindfulness practice.

Let’s move on to some homework …

HOMEWORK: Today there are a couple suggestions.

1) See if you can invite a sense-experience into your memory building. Maybe next time you follow my lead and breathe in your dog. (It’s not weird - trust me) Maybe you’re at the park with your kids and begin to actively listen to the sounds of birds and cars in the background. You can even do similar exercises to help you recall information for meetings or tests. Environments matter - if you have to give a speech in a specific room, go there to practice. Look around and intake the chairs, the carpet, the views beyond the windows. Wherever you are, and however it feels important to explore … invite in and experience more detail through sensation.

2) Think of a memory that feels vivid. It can be as pleasant or unpleasant as you feel comfortable exploring. See if you can recall how it sounded / smelled / tasted / felt. Does that memory exist just in your mind or is it also being re-experienced in your body? Then be with it as long as you’d like, considering that that experience isn’t even happening right now … it’s just  a movie playing on a loop, and you’re watching. If there is a body sensation accompanying, can you begin to acknowledge that sensation as independent from the memory? Does it change the way you experience the memory?

~ james CRADER