Last week was my turn (along with my partner) to run the class exercise. We decided to bring in a bunch of random items with distinct smells, put them in covered cups, and then pass them around. Everyone then wrote down a word or two that each cup smell reminded them of. Then, we gave them the task of picking the two smells that evoked the most emotion in them, and then asked them to write about these emotions.
Some of the most interesting stories of emotion were the ones that you would never have guessed could be connected back to the particular smell. For instance my favorite one was a short reminiscence of loneliness. The person smelled salt and vinegar potato chips, and it sparked in them a memory of a lonely time in their life. It is these unique moments like this that I was hoping to get out of this exercise.
After everyone wrote about their two emotions, we asked the class to then write a story that combined their previous two stories/emotions/memories in any way that they could. This ended up being a little more challenging. I think that for some people it was difficult because they're two pieces were too different from each other, and there just wasn't enough time to connect them. What I was hoping for was for the class to find new ways to connect different emotions and memories from their lives, or discover new insights into these emotions and memories. and in some instances I think this happened. One of my favorite combined memories/emotions story for this was a classmate who contemplated how much easier it would be to do his laundry if he could be hypnotized into thinking it smelled like donuts. This is such an interesting and unique thought, and it only came to be by attempting to associate two random smells/memories/emotions.
The exercise went pretty much as planned, and it resulted in some pretty interesting stories. It made me realize that something profound could be written by connecting even the most random and inconsequential instances in our lives.
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