Sense Memory

To me, the strongest memories are not cognitive. They are felt, with the senses.

Today I stepped onto the elevator at work and it smelled exactly like the tenement I used to stay in when I lived and worked in Chicago right after finishing college. Exactly. Instantly, I was taken back. It was more than just a memory of that time in my life. I felt like I was transported back to North Lake Shore Drive in 1996. If I had just closed my eyes and inhaled deeper, I might have opened them in that old Chicago hallway rather than a swanky corporate headquarters in KY.

So it is for the sharpest, most poignant memories of my life. A certain tilt of the sunlight or fresh Springtime breeze might remind me of walking the streets of Paris. So distinctly that I will almost feel as if I am headed to the Louvre instead of the employee parking garage, for one jarring instant. Hearing a particular song will take me back to my youthful twenties or cause me to wistfully dwell on some overwhelming emotion associated with a special person. It’s so powerful — what sound, smell, or even touch can do to the mind.

It’s not the same as looking at old photos. Or thinking back in your head to a special day. Those are just surface memories. What I am talking about is almost like time travel. It goes deeper than just remembering you were there. It is like actually being there, all over again. So powerful it is nearly scary.

Perhaps the closest way to describe it is something akin to déjà vu. The difference being that you don’t just get the illusion you have been here before. It is knowing and remembering exactly a time or place you have actually experienced, and going back there for a split second in this continuum we call time.

I cannot possibly be the only person this happens to.