The Sound of Bells – Part I

A link between Happiness and Childhood Memories.

Happiness is, as many other psychological human states, an elusive concept. A simple dictionary search tells you that happiness is a state of pleasure or contentment, and if you search up contentment, it tells you it is a state of happiness, that isn’t really helpful.
A definition of happiness has been a question since the very first thinkers, from ancient Greece to modern philosophy of Nietzsche and others. I am not here to define what happiness is anyway, but nevertheless, we can all agree that we do know or have encountered a state of happiness once in our life, “this feeling of joy and satisfaction that has put a smile on our faces”- emphasis on the quotations. What I aim for here is to shine a light on the link between our past experiences or memories, and happiness.

A Blank Page

We are all born strangers to this world, devoid of any knowledge, carrying a blank page we call memories. We start picking things up along the way, colours, sounds , smells and tastes, all of which get carved somewhere in our brain. This blank page is quickly inked by everything around us, and once it dries, it is never erased. We tend to forget most of the things that we’ve been through in our childhood, and only remember the major spotlights, but that doesn’t mean anything is gone, everything is still somewhere in the archive, lost in a sea of memories, we just don’t remember them, but we do react to them.
I doubt anybody remembers the first step they’ve taken, but one thing is for sure though, after that first step, the people around you started applauding your success, and you replied with a joyfully filled smile. This feeling of success and achievement gets stamped on your blank page, you have achieved something, you’ve taken your first step, you’re filled with joy, and you now know what it means to accomplish something.
Every single achievement later on in your life, we be automatically redirected to the first ever achievement you’ve accomplished, whether it was your first step, or saying your first word. It all started somewhere, and whatever comes later is just a repetition of something that has already been felt, but with a twist.

Digging the Archives

You stand there center staged under the spotlights, ready to give your thank you speech for the people you owe who got you up there to win that prestigious prize. You end your speech with a thank you again, and you hear the applause of everyone standing ovation, appreciating your work. You smile and filled with joy, but what is this feeling but the same feeling you’ve felt decades ago when you’ve taken your first step.
At some point in our lives, usually in our teenage years, this blank page gets saturated by the ink, and whatever we experience later on as adults gives us a feeling we have somewhat felt before, our brain just opens an archive of memories and pinpoint the feeling related to it.

This gets me to the title of this article, The Sound of Bells, where I would like to share a couple of personal experiences that support the above claims.
I have always found the sound of bells soothing to my soul, whether it was church bells, or chimes in the train station, it always lifted up my mood for reasons I wasn’t sure of until recently.
Going back to my childhood, it was a pretty simple one, I’ve spent my Saturdays doing my home works for school, hoping to finish as early as possible so I can enjoy my whole Sunday gaming on my new Pentium 4 computer that supported the best games at that time, best of which was Age of Empires 2 ( AOE 2 ). I wake up on a Sunday morning, the bright sunshine lighting up my room through my balcony, the smell of my mother’s amazing food boiling on the stove, the day could only get better by double clicking on that red feathered metal helmet ( the icon of AOE 2 ), and then starts a theme music that will be forever stuck in my head, and after it fades, ambience starts to play in the background, different sounds, the wind, the galloping of the horses’ hooves, the blacksmith, and most importantly, the sound of bells. I was the happiest child at that moment, the only thing that could trouble me was losing the game against my computer opponent. ( AOE 2 post theme ambience. )
I am confident to say that if I were to hear the galloping or the forging of metal I would get the same feeling as the feeling the sound of bells give me, I just do not encounter a lot of horses or blacksmiths in my daily life to give it as a solid example as the bells.
Having realised this, I started trying to ask myself the reason of why I like other specific things which some people might find ordinary, and the only answer I could find is because this “thing”, whatever it may be, is linked to a happy memory somewhere long back.
Another example I could give is early 20th century music ( 30’s to 60’s ) such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, etc. It is a genre I enjoy listening to very much. A genre, which you might not expect, carried the melody of many children, including myself, it is a genre that carried the melody of Tom and Jerry. As funny and silly this might sound, it is very much true. To test this, I once played Manhattan Serenade ( 1928 ) , a piece of music that was featured in one of Tom and Jerry episodes called Mouse in Manhattan, to a group of my friends. At first they looked at me wondering why the heck I am playing such music, followed by comfort smiles as they pointed out that this is similar to Tom and Jerry musics. ” But this is Tom and Jerry music”, I answered. As much to their surprise, I could notice a split second rush of memories in their heads, telling them:” Hey, you used to enjoy that show as a kid”, and my friends were happy.

This is the idea that I shall call “Evoked Feelings” – a sudden rush of synapses to our brain, digging into the archives of memories and evoking a feeling we have once felt.
So far I have discussed feelings of happiness, and hence evoked happiness, but the contrary also applies equally, that is “Evoked Sadness”, where a memory is simply linked to a past sad experience. Examples to follow.
Going back to the sound of bells, I was discussing this idea with one of my colleagues, who also had his own experience with the sound of bells, the only difference than my experience, is that it evoked sadness in him. His story goes like this :” The sound of bells brings a lot of fear and miserable images to my head, it reminds me of the times of the Serbian war, when the church bells were used to alarm the citizens, a call to take shelter from the sounding danger of gunshots and bullets.”

Whether it was sound, smell, or even taste or touches, they all evoke childhood memories, and gives us flashbacks, some fills us with joy, and other we wish to abandon.
A nice example of evoked happiness linked to taste ( and touch ) is beautifully depicted in the movie Ratatouille, when the critic, Anton Ego, tastes the Ratatoullie after a long time and is instantly transported to his childhood home after the first bite. Young Anton, seen sad and crying after falling from his bike, sees his mother serving him a plate of Ratatoullie, he rejoices, and smiles in delight as she caresses his wet teary cheek.

Next time in Part II,I shall deal with what I call ” The Last touch of Happiness” and ” Loving Memories” where I talk about the idea of love, and how even this complicated emotional feeling, is connect somehow to our childhood, whether it was a friend or our life long partner, somehow we are in search for the people that reminds us of something, something in the depths of our memorial archives.