Time Out

TIME OUT By: Ann Short The Bosch Law Firm

APPRECIATION

Go along with me for a few minutes and do exactly as I ask – please. Go buy a package of 5-flavor Life Savers. Seriously, don’t read any further until you have pack of Life Savers. Now, round up two or three friends or children who (to your knowledge) are not COVID infected.

Unroll the entire package of Life Savers and place them randomly on a plate in the middle of your group. Instruct the participants: “Shut your eyes, pinch your nose, and pick one of the Life Savers from the plate. Keeping your eyes shut and nose closed off, put the Life Saver in your mouth.” Continue the instructions: “Move the Life Saver around in your mouth, as you normally would. Notice how the candy tastes.” Final instruction: “Now, release your nose and breathe normally.” Ask each participant: “What flavor of Life Saver do you have in your mouth?”

What just happened? If your participants followed along, they should report that with their eyes shut and nose pinched, the pieces of candy had a general sweet taste. When they released their noses and breathed normally, they should say they could smell and taste the Life Saver’s flavors: cherry, orange, pineapple, lemon, and lime.

Smell, taste, and flavor. There are five tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. Taste is the perception produced or stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds in the oral cavity, mostly on the tongue. Flavor, however, is a combination of taste and smell. That is, taste, along with smell, determines flavors of food and other substances.

Try to imagine losing your sense of smell. The simple pleasure of smelling coffee brewing, bacon frying, or a newborn baby – gone. Not being able to smell smoke or a skunk to avoid something dangerous or unpleasant. The scientific name is anosmia, and it can disrupt every aspect of life from the practical to the emotional. Some people are born with the condition. Others suddenly lose olfaction because of a head injury, a nasal tumor, radiation, or viral infections. By now, most of us have heard or read that a significant percentage of COVID-19 patients have anosmia.

Scent lodges itself largely in the long-term memory system of the brain. For that reason, the sense of smell can transport us to other places and call forth memories of other people. The scent of Old Spice aftershave always reminds me of my father; the smell of Elmer’s glue takes me back to grade school; and I keep a small tin of cherry pipe tobacco to remind me of Bob. Having those connections severed can be quite overwhelming. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, “Smells are surer than sights and sounds to make your heart-strings crack.”

Doctor Jayant Pinto has observed, that of all the senses, “smell is the most undervalued and under-appreciated – until it’s gone.” 1 Depression frequently follows anosmia. Some of you may recall Michael Hutchence, an Australian musician, singer-songwriter and actor. He co-founded the rock band INXS and was the lead singer and lyricist of INXS from 1977 until his death. In August 1992, Hutchence and a female companion were walking late at night on a street in Copenhagen after drinking heavily. Hutchense refused to move for a taxi. The taxi driver then assaulted him, causing him to fall backwards and hit his head on the roadway. Hutchence suffered a fractured skull in the altercation but did not immediately seek medical assistance. As a result, his fractured skull left him with an almost complete loss of the sense of smell. This injury led to periods of depression and increased levels of aggression, ending with his suicide in 1997.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our sense of normality. There are, however, many messages in the mess. Appreciation is one such message. The sense of smell, I encourage you, should be appreciated and savored. When next you wake, take a few seconds, a few minutes, to “appreciate” the smell of the snoring dog in the bed, the coffee brewing, the bread in the toaster, the shampoo in a hot shower, a warm towel fresh from the dryer. And, when was the last time you paused to appreciate the smell of rain? During a thunderstorm, lightning can split oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere, which recombine into nitric oxide. This substance interacts with other chemicals in the atmosphere to form ozone, which has a chlorine-like smell. Another rain odor is called “petrichor.” It is derived from a pair of chemical reactions. Some plants secrete oils during dry periods, and when it rains, these oils are released into the air. The second reaction that creates petrichor occurs when chemicals produced by soil-dwelling bacteria are released. These compounds combine to create the pleasant petrichor scent when rain hits the ground. “Stop and smell the roses” may be a cliché, but appreciating the meaningful things and people in our lives may play an even larger role in our overall happiness than previously thought. Rutgers University psychology professor Nancy Fagley administered a survey measuring levels of appreciation, which Fagley defines as “acknowledging the value and meaning of something—an event, a behavior, an object— and feeling positive emotional connection to it.” This phenomenon is distinct from gratitude, Fagley says, which is a positive emotion directed toward a benefactor in response to receiving a gift of some sort. What Fagley discovered is that appreciation appears to be twice as significant as gratitude in determining overall satisfaction with life. 2

As for practicing appreciation on a daily basis, Fagley suggests focusing on and valuing what we have, spending time outdoors, and reflecting on our blessings and relationships with others.

To that list, I add, “Don’t forget the Life Savers. Stop and smell the Life Savers!”

1

2 See https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-eerie-relationshipbetween-smell-and-death/381057/. See https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/a_scientific_reason_to_stop_ and_smell_the_roses.