Does This Ever Happen To You?
Does This Ever Happen To You?
Here's the situation: Sitting at my desk as the sun went down this afternoon, just after concluding a long Skype
call with a fellow in another country, I was time-shifted in a manner
of speaking. My mind suddenly went back about 12 or 13 years ago,
to a specific moment in time. A personal sort of time and place
moment. It wasn't just memory -- for the moment (a teeny little
instant, maybe a second at most) in my mind I had total recall of a
certain place and moment. Recall so acute as to be stunning.
What I mean is that this moment just
flashed into my mind, out of the blue. As Yogi Berra put it, it was deja vu all over again.
It was Cleveland, in a rented car, on a project my firm was conducting for one of Rupert Murdoch's
companies. I was in traffic, at a five-points sort of corner, trying
to get my bearings and determine whether to go back to where I was
staying, or to go to the facility where we were conducting some focus
groups that evening. Years and years of doing research had taught
me to always take a drive out to the facility (from wherever I might be
staying) to get a sense of the timing, the roads, and if the directions
I'd been provided were, indeed, any good.
So there I am this afternoon at my desk, this moment flashing back, becoming for a
brief instant, top of mind. Rather than considering the work
facing me on the monitor, or what else needed to be done as the day
drew to a close, for one small millisecond or so I was catapulted to
the memory if that day in Cleveland. And not just that day, but
also that moment, that place. So much so that I recalled the
intersection, the weather and sky conditions, what radio station I was
tuned to, even the smell of the rental car. Conscious of all
these things, yet totally aware that I was sitting at my desk, work in
front of me.
I've often associated smells with memories; scent or aroma that calls
to mind a place or most usually, a place and time. Sometimes just
hearing a song can be a catalyst to bring about a recollection.
But clear out of the blue, no sensory stimuli, nothing, and into my
consciousness comes a memory (and all the feelings of the day) of a
moment from many years ago. A very wierd sensation.
What causes such things? The brain works in mysterious
ways. Is or are there rotation(s) of recall, events from our past
that cycle around and this one happened to come into clarity on a
November afternoon? Have other events and occurences of the day,
the week, the month, even th hour, prompted that Cleveland moment to
rise to conscious awareness?
That time in Cleveland was a peculiar moment in my life. I was
working on a dream of a project for a special media group within the
Murdoch portfolio. I loved the work. And as a client, one
could ask for no better -- this Murdoch group was an ethical and above board, wonderful
to work with group. We truly collaborated, and the work benefited
from that arrangement. I even managed to arrange conduct of the Cleveland
portion of the work when the Yankees were in town. A radio
business buddy in the Cleveland market managed to get great tickets to the
game. The Yanks won, making it even that much better.
But it was also a time when my marriage was crumbling, my ex had been
and was still extremely ill (her doctors warned me of her
impending death, which she has managed to continue to forestall for
well over a decade), and business, except for this peach of a project
with Murdoch and a few retainer clients, was not so hot. My kids
were very young, life was a barrel of uncertainty. There were
also some problems with health insurance, for which I was paying a
king's ransom in those days, adding to the general sense of stress and
anxiety which had overtaken our lives.
The Murdoch research and consulting project and some possibilities it
offered for the future were two of the more positive things in my life
during that time. Having a good client who was responsive
and supportive and collaborative --and who paid on time, a rarity!--
was as though a gift from some greater power, in an attempt to balance
what was otherwise a troubled and unrewarding time.
And all of this came back to me in a flash, explosing in memory through
a millisecond when my mind went back to that day in Cleveland, at that
intersection, in that beige rental car, over a decade ago.
And thus the question: Does
this -- or do similar such events -- ever happen to you?
From out of the blue, stunning clarity and recall of a single moment,
all coming to mind with no apparent stimuli . . .surely this happens to
others, yes?
