Scent

Today I decided to tidy up a little and I tried to rationalise some of the junk I've accumulated over the last few years. It started out as an attempt to make room for my growing DVD collection but once I got going I thought I might as well keep going. I can't take credit for a job well done just yet because I'm only about half-way there; there's a whole lot of stuff on the floor just waiting for me to find a place to store it or throw it away. That'll be the hard part but I'll worry about that tomorrow.

While sorting through some of my toiletries - I have far more cologne and deodorant than I ever realised - I discovered a near-empty can of a deodorant I haven't worn for about seven years. I sprayed a little on myself and ever since then I've been thinking a lot about who I was and what I was doing all those years ago. I know, like I needed something to stimulate me to ponder my past any more than I already do.

The scent of something can cause it to be so vividly remembered that it almost feels like you're living that part of your life over again. And not necessarily in a specific way. For me, the smell of something familiar or meaningful not only brings back specific and concrete memories of particular events and people but also more general, atmospheric-type memories of eras in my life; ethereal and non-specific feelings indefinably encapsulating years of emotions into a single moment of recollection. This particular fragrance instantly rewound the last seven or so years of my life and reminded me of who I was back then. Back then, like now, I didn't have much faith in myself but I kept myself busy and productive at work and university. I was depressed and had no goals, lofty or otherwise, but within me there was sense that, in time, I would overcome all that and I would eventually find my place in the world. Back then, despite my somewhat negative outlook, I didn't have such a closed view of who I was. Things still seemed possible. It seemed possible that I could do great things and that one day maybe I would.

The biggest difference between me then and now is that I have lost that sense of possibility. I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened - although, ever so often I experience it again, albeit fleetingly - but I've definitely lost it. At the time I don't think I even knew I had it but in retrospect I realise that I did. What happened in those intervening seven years?

I'm not sitting here trying to say that I've wasted my whole life; I know it's only seven years. Seven years isn't that long a time, except if it represents more than a quarter of your life thus far. Looking at it that way puts things in a different light. If seven years, more than a quarter of my life, has passed me by and the only thing I have to show for it is the loss of hope and possibility, where does that leave me? I haven't outgrown my flawed, pessimistic outlook - I've grown into it. And I've lost that little bit of me I didn't want to lose: the part of me that believed, despite all my anxieties, that I would be okay; the part of me that believed that I might one day be happy.

Maybe this is what I need right now. A reminder that every moment I spend dwelling in the past is a moment of my future wasted. I need to use the time while I've still got it. Otherwise, seven years from now I'll find myself doing the same thing I'm doing now only I'll be even further away from what I want.