The bottle is tucked away in a place that ensures it will never fall off the shelf and break. I doubt there is much more than a half ounce of fluid left in it, but the 45-year-old contents are like gold to me. It has been several years since I unscrewed the top to let the liquid serve its purpose.

The bottle holds what was left of my dad’s British Sterling cologne when he died 43 years ago. I hold onto it so I can stir memories with the scent of it. It has been years since I have done so, but the bottle waits for whenever I need it.

There is a lesson in the bottle: stirring memories and feelings with our senses. In this digital age, most everything is sterile. We have lost much of what engages our senses in ways that we reconnect to people and events through recollections.

The smell of a leather baseball glove stirs memories of playing with my friends when I was a kid, and with my sons as a dad; video games provide no such connection. The texture and sound of paper from a book, letters or music provide what an e-book never could. The stiff edges of a photographic print and the scent of old photo album pages will never be replaced by images that appear on screens. The smell of salt air invigorates memories of times fishing, crabbing or playing in the surf, which YouTube videos of those same activities will never produce.

Quite frankly, our digital lives are sense-less, without the use of our senses of smell, touch or taste. Seek that which stirs our senses to invigorate our memories and connections to life.