I am one of those people who loves the scent of rain-soaked earth: the moment before the rain begins to fall, the first drops that touch the ground, the scent of earth that is released.
I smell the changing air. I have always found that there was something magical and I discovered that that perfume has a name: petrichor. It's funny how something so poetic actually has to do with bacteria and chemicals.
In a study made by two Australian geologists Isabel Joy Bear and RG Thomas and coined from the Greek pétra (stone) and (ichór) lymph but also blood of the gods . In their article, the authors described it as "the smell that comes from an oil emanating from certain plants during periods of drought".
Love also has to do with chemistry and smell: we give off a smell that attracts the other. Smell is one of our 5 senses. It brings us back to our primitive nature and connects us back to our deepest memories. The smell of coffee in the morning, the south´s bakeries, with the smell of pizza and biscuits (large and lightly crushed biscuits, to be dipped in milk), the smell of the sea and its salt. There are smells that can transport us through time and space. They guide us, lull us and linger in some, while others strike us and we shun them. The smell of the printer, for example, and of the pod coffee machine nauseated and make me nervous (it was the typical smell of an office where I used to work) or a specific perfume for men: in both cases, my first instinct it is "Run!".
The sense of smell, even more than the taste, is really powerful. Since we were born, the olfactory system processes and catalogs all the odorous molecules with which it comes into contact, allowing us to recognize what we like, from what could represent a danger (fires, spoiled food, unhealthy air). An olfactory memory can influence our affective preferences and our daily behaviors. The area of the brain that processes the olfactory experience is connected to the limbic system, directly connected to our emotions (amygdala) and to our memory (hippocampus). This is why the memories that come from a perfume are so vivid and immediate. What are the perfumes you are looking for? What emotions do they arouse? What memories?
Proposal: have you ever tried to make the bottle of memories or happiness?
A bottle or a glass container is enough to put, every day, a reminder of what happened during the day. Even a small thing will helps: a look on the bus, a job we are proud of, a phone call, a message. Every day you will collect a precious memory that you can reread after months or at the end of the year. I did it for a couple of years (before my daughter, still small at the time but destroyer of everything, broke the vase into a thousand pieces, fortunately without consequences!). I still keep those little pieces of paper: some take me back to really happy moments that I no longer remembered, others how much I have changed, for better or for worse, still others how my habits and priorities have changed.
Let me know if you want to start this experiment!
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