“Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine someone putting a plate of food in front of you. You don’t recognize what it is. You swear you’ve never seen anything like it before in your life. You take a bite with slight trepidation. A tingling occurs. Your pupils dilate. It’s delicious. You register a shock: You’ve eaten this before at one point in your life. You don’t remember when you ate it, but with equal certainty that you expressed about not having ever seen anything like this prior to the first bite, you now are unequivocally certain you’ve had this before. The taste triggers vague, nebulous recollections of your childhood from the quiet corners of your mind and then just as quickly they disappear. No other documentation exists that validate those memories other than your own conviction of your thoughts. This plate of unfamiliar food is suddenly the only thing that tells you, “Yes, those memories exist.”  This occurred to me on one of my most memorable trips and experiences when I returned to a place that was …