Souvenirs: Our sensorial selves, memories of the future

What do souven­irs mean to you? 

What do they say about the people who col­lect them and the places souven­irs pur­port to rep­res­ent; then, now, and in the future? 

It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight by K Michael Hay­wood. (You too can write a “GT” Insight.)

Souvenirs

Hav­ing returned from a month in Por­tugal my head, while writ­ing these words, is still abuzz with the sounds of Fado, the glor­i­ous sights of the Douro Val­ley vine­yards, the sen­sa­tions of Porto, Lis­boa, Sin­tra, Obidos, Naz­are, Alco­baca, beach and coun­try life. 

But, by the time you read these words, it will be the souven­irs of that trip that help to keep alive my memor­ies of that time; rev­el­at­ory of the good life, the deep­en­ing of rela­tion­ships, the feel­ings that come from being-in-the-world.

Souven­irs, the mem­or­ab­il­ia that we can­not res­ist hav­ing and col­lect­ing, con­stantly remind­ing us of how travel changes our lives, sharpens our sens­ib­il­it­ies, enriches our per­cep­tions, and ban­ishes ill-con­ceived preconceptions. 

Souven­irs that provide insight into what con­sti­tutes value, how it’s mani­fest and remembered, espe­cially through our senses. Giv­ing rise to emo­tions and feel­ings. Play­ing into our ima­gin­a­tions and our cre­at­ive pur­suits for high­er-value achievements.

Through­out our homes, dec­or­at­ive and found objets de art and nature, records, books, clothes, col­lect­ables, knick-knacks; each a nos­tal­gic remin­isce; a state­ment; a means of shar­ing weird and won­der­ful stor­ies about places we’ve been, people we’ve met. 

Also see K Michael Hay­wood’s “GT” Insight ‘Souven­irs: Can three pieces of cor­al inspire tour­ism towards ocean regeneration?’

Souven­irs, reflec­tions of who we are, our interests, what we deem import­ant, beau­ti­ful and worth­while. Touch­stones to epis­od­ic moments and what we gleaned and learned about the world, ourselves and those dear to us, the cul­tures of people, the tears of joy, a con­flu­ence of everyone’s sen­su­al and lived experiences. 

Souven­irs, remind­ers of the vital­ity of des­tin­a­tions offer­ing hap­pi­ness advant­ages, espe­cially through awe that evokes mind­ful­ness, and the con­scien­tious efforts of every­day people ded­ic­ated to cre­at­ing and embel­lish­ing the authen­t­ic senses of their place, reveal­ing and rev­el­ling in the pride they have for their own communities. 

Clearly, souven­irs con­sti­tute a study with mul­tiple themes, espe­cially the artis­an­al move­ment that hon­ours design and crafts­man­ship, provides essen­tial live­li­hoods, and reas­sures every­one that ori­gin­al­ity counts if the future viab­il­ity of com­munit­ies-as-des­tin­a­tions is to be honoured.

Rep­res­ent­at­ive of travel’s trans­form­at­ive gifts, souven­irs serve to arouse aware­ness, curi­os­ity, and desires, as we trans­ition toward our own desired and not-so-dis­tant futures, serving as “the lens through which our brains con­tin­ue to view the world and shape our reality”. 

Our sensorial selves

As rev­el­at­ory remind­ers of the value we crave, souven­irs serve to re-engage our senses that, as time goes by, con­tin­ue to elev­ate the nov­elty of place and the ordin­ar­i­ness or excep­tion­al­ity of the people we’ve met. 

As we recall the sen­sa­tions that triggered our feel­ings, wheth­er in nature, at play, or on the road again, it’s as if we are determ­ined to relive what we exper­i­enced: Joy and regret, con­fid­ence and unease; feel­ings that aug­men­ted or lessened our motiv­a­tion and trust, and, thereby, our desire to observe, cre­ate, learn, and connect. 

Free from the con­straints of home and work life, our travel-related sen­sori­al exper­i­ences intensi­fy, espe­cially when their over­tures ascend to exceed the value that is merely func­tion­al and trans­ac­tion­al; elev­ated to that which is emo­tion­ally, socially, and life-affirm­ingly transcendent. 

Feel­ings that occur with fre­quency so long as there is a by design intent that actu­ates and improves our lives, espe­cially when hon­oured by those who serve with good sense, sens­it­iv­ity, and sensibility. 

As I write, I nod to the glory of Por­tugal that re-awakened my senses, simply by multi-sen­su­al­ising its sense of place; accen­tu­ated through enga­ging tour­ism design and enhanced through inspir­ing hos­pit­al­ity that provided “pos­it­iv­ity in the present”.

Also see Ricardo Oli­veir­a’s “GT” Insight from Por­tugal ‘Why We Hate Tour­ism Tours & why you should too’

Senses that now have developed lives their own, triggered whenev­er I hear cer­tain sounds, smell cer­tain scents, savour a cer­tain culin­ary delight, or (in cer­tain situ­ations) am repelled by sights or plights that fright; all of which are well-explained in A Nat­ur­al His­tory of the Senses.  

In reliv­ing and re-con­struct­ing my sen­su­al memor­ies, how­ever, I have learned that we have to be cir­cum­spect. Our mul­ti­tude of senses can offer up strange tales, alter­ing the real­ity of our real­it­ies, includ­ing the real­it­ies exper­i­enced and per­ceived by oth­ers, lead­ing to empath­et­ic regard for the well-being and ‘well­th’ of people and place, espe­cially when com­ing from, what I per­ceive to be, places of privilege. 

In this regard, I now real­ise how import­ant it is to appre­ci­ate how our senses affect and determ­ine how we com­mu­nic­ate with ourselves, how the world informs us of itself, and how our future beha­viours are likely to be influenced. 

While our senses and souven­irs tend to be rep­res­ent­at­ive of life under­stood back­wards, they should urge us to fathom and think in the future tense, espe­cially when activ­ated through rad­ic­al sens­ory enhance­ment. 

Memories of the future

With the world con­stantly evolving, how­ever, what hap­pens when we attempt to revive past sen­su­al memor­ies, when our pre­ferred des­tin­a­tions have moved on and are no longer what they were? 

It has been 30 years since I ini­tially vis­ited Portugal’s south­ern regions. Much has changed, but I found my older-self reflect­ing on what was, amazed with what now is, or, more pre­cisely, strug­gling to re-inter­pret a revived sense-of-place that ini­tially, and in a strange sense, seemed out-of-place, yet in a far bet­ter or more favour­able place.

Could it be I was caught in a time warp, remem­ber­ing and exper­i­en­cing the world as it isn’t? My senses rever­ber­at­ing neuro-physiolo­gic­ally, sig­nalling a degree of bewil­der­ment and intrigue in search of renewed aware­ness, truth, and know­ledge based on obser­va­tion and story-listen­ing.

As hap­pens dur­ing absences, I had become unaware as to how oth­ers had been act­ively engaged in dream­ing and pre­par­ing for a bet­ter future, over­com­ing obstacles and objec­tions in order to bring about change. 

Read more by K Michael Haywood

A real­isa­tion that the cur­rency of the present is always rep­res­ent­at­ive of peoples’ past or former vis­ions; memor­ies of the future whose hori­zons, at the time, couldn’t help but be decept­ively blurry, naïve, and unin­ten­tion­ally vague. 

Memor­ies of the future, products of con­fab­u­lated ima­gin­a­tions that, in the pre-devel­op­ment stage, would be dif­fi­cult to make sense of unless sim­u­la­tions or pro­to­types were util­ised to facil­it­ate their devel­op­ment, adapt to what could or should be, and identi­fy any unfore­seen consequences. 

Prob­lems that could be nipped in-the-bud if only more des­tin­a­tions and vis­it­or-serving enter­prises first sought to eval­u­ate the pur­pose of their pur­pose before for­mu­lat­ing a new meth­od­o­lo­gic­al frame­work — souven­irs from the future — inten­ded to engage the senses to achieve fur­ther cre­at­ive flow and intel­li­gence.  

Souven­irs, in a unique sense, ded­ic­ated to driv­ing new beha­viours and sen­sa­tions; facil­it­at­ing con­ver­sa­tions; identi­fy­ing blind-spots; coun­ter­ing bias and ste­reo­types; respect­ful of cul­tur­al needs; alter­ing the nar­rat­ives; and, coher­ent with pur­pose-led progress. 

I am reminded of the BBC’s 2045: Memor­ies of the Future; won­der­ing why sim­il­ar efforts aren’t being applied to future-proof­ing tour­ism, and care­fully con­tex­tu­al­ised with­in com­munit­ies-as-des­tin­a­tions as they strive to enhance their dis­tinct sense of place, their dis­tinct sense of self. 

What do you think? 

What do you think? What do souven­irs mean to you? What do they say about the places they pur­port to rep­res­ent; then, now, and in the future?

Share your own thoughts in a com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism, because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s busi­ness.

“GT” is where free thought travels.

About the author

K Michael Hay­wood is Pro­fess­or Emer­it­us, School of Hos­pit­al­ity, Food and Tour­ism at the Uni­ver­sity of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Prof Hay­wood has recently writ­ten an e‑book “Aston­ish, Smarter Tour­ism by Design”. Find Michael on Linked­In.

Featured image (top of post)

Souven­irs from Por­tugal. Base image by Sun­guk Kim (CC0) via Unsplash. “GT” added the words “Memor­ies in future tense”.

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