“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
C. S. Lewis 1898–1963
Where across the course of your day today, could you consider where it might be that you use your hurt as a growth spurt, not a wilting waste?
On my way home from the gym yesterday afternoon, I walked through the local markets and smelled the most wonderful fragrance, which I followed to its source: a stand selling incense and other ritualistic ornaments.
When I asked the stall holding lady what this particular incense was, she said, “Agarwood,” and went on to explain that one incense stick would burn for 2 hours, but didn’t have to, and it could be used like sage to cleanse your house of negative energy, which she preferred, as sage tends to make her house smell bad.
I asked her a couple of other questions she couldn’t answer, so I told her she had given me my homework for the day.
There is a tree in Southeast Asia called Aquilaria, whose wood is pale and almost scentless.
When the tree is wounded, a specific mould enters the damaged area, and the tree defends itself by producing a dark, aromatic resin.
Over years, sometimes decades, that resin saturates the heartwood, resulting in agarwood, also known as oud in the Middle East.
Oud is one of the most valuable natural substances on earth, worth more per gram than gold.
We all have a story of wounding, betrayal, redundancy, diagnosis, breakup, or a season of limbo.
Most people look at the wound and only see the damage, but the biology of agarwood offers something else. The wound is not the end of the story; the response is.
The tree doesn’t resent the infection; it doesn’t ask why; it fortifies.
And in fortifying, it transforms.
Your character is the resin you produce in response to pressure.
Your discipline is the resin, your boundaries are the resin.
Your early mornings, your gym sessions, your forgiveness and your restraint.
That is the fragrance.
We often pray for value without realising that value is usually formed around vulnerability.
Agarwood teaches something uncomfortable but powerful:
Uninjured wood is common; resin-formed wood is rare.
So instead of asking, “Why did this happen to me?”
A more empowering question might be: “What am I producing in response?”
Because pain handled well becomes depth. Pain left unmanaged becomes decay.
Handled deliberately, it becomes perfume.
And that is something the world can smell.
The limbic system is the brain’s emotional and memory centre, and because scent signals connect directly to it without passing through rational filters, smells can instantly trigger vivid memories and emotional states.
You can prime your limbic system to improve memory by pairing emotion, repetition, and sensory cues with the material you want to retain.
The limbic system strengthens memory when something feels important, emotionally charged, or physiologically distinct. As I sit here writing with this wonderful scent, I remembered that, when researching, I hadn’t thought to ask the price before tapping and going.
I checked my bank account and remembered that I didn’t have to let the agarwood burn for two hours.
While you’re thinking about that, think about this and have Gr8 day!
Be well,
DL
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
Helen Keller 1880–1968