Miraculous Minds
I started to relax and read a book this evening and a line read, “The mind is a miracle: and it caused me to think how fragile our memories are. An illness, fever, or an injury can steal our past and leave us adrift in the present or they can distort our imaginings into a dream or a nightmare. How quickly music or the lyrics of a song can whisk us pack into the past as if it was only yesterday. The song can bring back great memories of love, passion, or great times with friends. A song may stir the emotions of sadness or remorse. A song may soothe taking us to a place of peace, relaxation, and joy. The song may cause past skeletons to rattle in our brain’s closet.
Someone may say something in a manner of a loved one who has passed that opens a Pandora’s Box of nearly forgotten emotion. The flood may be overwhelming that floods our souls and eyes. Someone may say something that snaps on a light, pulling a memory from its dark hiding spot in our brain. It may turn the switch and a locomotive of remembrance roars out of a dark tunnel, its headlight focuses our eyes on our old familiar memories.
Feelings of Déjà vu may give us concern. Have we been here before? Can the familiar feeling be caused by an actual place we’ve been and that has been locked away for so long that it has been forgotten and only a trace remains? Could it be a memory that we’ve tucked away so deeply that only a shadow remains. There used to be a radio program, “Only the shadow knows.”
Taste is another sense that may turn a key to open past memories. How many times have I heard someone say, “This tastes like food my mom or grandmother used to make?” Or “this doesn’t taste like the food my mom made.” Is our memory faulty or is our mind sharing a memory that no one can ever compete? I know that I’ve tried to replicate a recipe and have fallen sorrowfully short.
Because of my head injury in February 2015 I have phantom smells. Odors that aren’t actually present, but the olfactory area of my brain says that they’re present. There are times I wander through my house trying to locate the elusive odor, only to find it’s nonexistent. There are other scents that will lead me back to a certain time and my brain will reactivate the moment. It will come alive again by a single sniff.
The brain and the memories housed within are precious. Be careful with them.