The Power of Association: Don't Underestimate Your Own Brain, Dummy

There is a reason that every time I cover a public toilet seat with toilet paper before I sit down, I think of a certain unnamed friend. I'm just not sure what that reason is.

I don't know why or when this started, it just did.

It doesn't happen when I walk into the bathroom knowing full well that I'm going to be using the stall, it's not as I turn around and lock the door, it's exactly when I start laying down that paper. He just pops into my head. Every single time.

I can only attribute this to the power of association. For the life of me I can't recall any incident or conversation that would link this person to the activity to which his memory is tied. But somewhere, at some point in my past, my mind went and made some random association between this sanitary activity and my friend, and so there it is and ever shall be.

This got me thinking about more relevant instances of association in our lives. We all experience them. Not one person who reads this article won't know how it feels to smell some specific scent and immediately, involuntarily, be invaded by a swath of memories that are forever and irreversibly linked to that particular aroma. Often we know exactly how, when and where the association was made: An ex's perfume or cologne, the distinct smell of the cabins from your middle school summer camp, or the musky smell of your high school gym. I bet you can smell every one of them in your mind's nose right now, can't you?

But, like my bizarre and somewhat unfortunate friend-toilet seat covering association, some just can't be explained.

You'll forgive me my arrogance, I'm sure, but in the field of random association, I am a prodigy. I'm a savant. A natural, as it were.

When I was young, I didn't know that it was abnormal for words, all words, to have flavors and tastes. I didn't know this was strange.

One day, around age fourteen, sitting around the kitchen in my friend's house after school, I revealed for whatever reason that my friend's name, "Josh," tastes like toast and butter.

Blank stares.

I also revealed that my friend Travis' name tastes like processed potatoes, and that my friend Steven's name tastes like watermelon seeds, and that my friend Adam's name tastes like apples. (Go figure.)

I was assured that this was not normal.

A few years later, my friend Leah, a psychology student, told me that my ability is a rare phenomenon called synesthesia.

There are multiple forms of synesthesia. The majority of synesthetes, as it turns out, see particular colors when they hear sounds or tones. (I also dabble in this one, though very lightly. A famous synesthete of this particular variety is singer/songwriter John Mayer.) Other synesthetes assign personalities to numbers, letters, and other symbols. Others see certain numbers and symbols in particular colors.

All synesthesia is involuntary. We don't choose the colors or personalities of our symbols, the colors of our notes and tones, or the tastes of our words. We don't alter or change them. We don't forget them. They just are.

Mine, the rarest, as I have come to learn, is called Lexical Gustatory Synesthesia. In a nut shell, my brain has, on its own time, behind my back, made thousands of associations between words and flavors. I don't know how or why, but they're there. Some are obvious (like the Adam=Apple one), but others don't make any apparent sense (News=Cooked Spinach...I don't know why). Depending on how hungry I am (and how strong the flavor is), I can almost taste the flavors when I hear the words.

And yes, the names of foods always line up with the flavor of that food. Always.

This super power, aside from making me a unique brand of party favor for excited people who want to know what their names taste like (and let me assure you, it doesn't bother me in the least to be asked), is pretty useless. It can even be inconvenient. If I hear the word choice enough, I'll start craving sloppy Joes so bad I'll have to go to the store and get the ingredients.

I tell you all of this simply to illustrate the power of association. We may not all be synesthetes, but we are all subject to association.

For me, it isn't all toilet seats and flavored words. The movies I love, the music I love, the places I love, are all heavily influenced by association. For example, when I listen to Ryan Adams' album "Heartbreaker," somewhere a synapse (or something) fires in my brain that touches a certain nerve, and suddenly I feel how it felt to be driving in my jeep back in Kentucky or hanging out at "The Cabin" in the winter of 2003-2004, wondering about that one girl and letting the melancholy of the Kentucky winter wash over me. (This isn't to say that the scientific process of association, however inaccurately I have described it, in any way robs the process of its Romance. The complexity and end result of the whole phenomenon reek of transcendence and divinity.)

But what about the people I know? Are there some deep associations I couldn't possibly identify dictating who I enjoy hanging out with and who, for some reason, have just always rubbed me the wrong way?

Whatever the case may be, the fact of the matter is that this all comes down to feelings. I didn't sit down and make the logical choice that I'm going to taste strawberry Kool-aid when I hear Emily's name. It's just a feeling.

I didn't, believe it or not, sit down and decide that I'm going to be crushed and even depressed when Notre Dame loses a football game. It's a deep-seated feeling.

I didn't decide that every time I smell the Victoria's Secret scent "Very Sexy" I would suddenly remember exactly how it felt to hug that one girl. It's an invasive and involuntary feeling. (Emily once offered me a whiff from a "Very Sexy" sample and asked if I recommend she get a bottle. I quickly nixed the idea.)

I didn't decide that when I hear "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers that I will be so overcome with feelings connected to adolescence and divorce and change and self-discovery and friends and the search for identity that my chest will want to burst. It's just a feeling.

I think, despite all of the things that happen to us, and the things that happen because of our choices, and despite the feelings we carry, we have Choice. Turns out we always did.

I could have chosen never to drink strawberry Kool-aid, never to watch Notre Dame football, never to talk to that girl, and never to listen to The Wallflowers. But I did all of those things. I didn't have any clue what the results of those actions would be, but they were my actions nonetheless, and now they're my feelings.

I mentioned earlier that this all got me thinking about the more relevant instances of associations in our lives. Well, believe it or not, they're all relevant. You'll never know what consequences will come of the choices you make. But if you take a look at that big tangled mess of crossed wires of feelings and emotions and associations that is your heart, you may start to be able to sort out which choices were wise, and which weren't.

That's at least a start, right?



By Jonny Walls