I like the way I function with all that I have. I am used to it and this is my reality of life. It took me years to understand the use of my senses and I still am unaware of a lot about it but its mine and are part of my world. A world that I understand to through my senses and make the world understand me with the help of these senses. Losing even one of the senses would mean the world becoming a puzzle with few parts missing. It just gives a very incomplete and hard to imagine world. Something I can’t associate myself with. But if this were to happen, and my reality was to be shaken and if i could give up one of my 5 senses. I am using the traditional five sense model so as to make it easier for me to decide. I
would give up my sense of smell. Before I explain why i could give up my olfactory, I would like to explain why giving up other senses would be much harder.
I chose smell not because it isn’t a significant part of how I construct my world but because losing the sense of smell does not seem as damaging as other senses do. I absolutely can not live without sight. It’s a no no. Sight for me holds truth like nothing else and i can’t ‘see’ myself living without it. Plus this world, the people, organisms and synthetic stuff and everything else imaginable makes life ‘life’ which i can only experience through my eyes! I live through my eyes, I believe through my eyes and I sense my surroundings through my eyes. I learn through my eyes. And experiencing all these emotions without eyes would be a dark, dry and boring world, a world where I would constantly be needing someone else’s support to get me through the day. Even though after reading Oliver Sacks work I came to realize how other senses compensate for a non functional sense but it is extremely hard for me to imagine my life without sight.
I love food! It’s gives color to my world. Food is indulgence, it’s guilty pleasure. It is so important that even Eve and Adam couldn’t resist the temptation. Sometimes different tastes make my day brighter, more special and eventful. Taste is something I refuse to do without. Period.
Touch is important as I need to know how my body feels, my surrounding feels, how to keep my self safe from harm. How the first touch of my new born child would feel. Touch is so related to feelings! How cuddling feels, how a mothers hug feels, how pain makes you feel. Without touch it would be like robbing yourself of so many emotions. I would have things in my hand but it would feel like an illusion as I wont be able to feel it. It would feel weird and unreal.
Hearing is too crucial for survival. Sound is every where and we use it as means of information. Listening to people and learning through the means of hearing, hearing the fire alarms and car horns for our safety, listening to the baby crying, enjoying the music and forgetting our woes through the medium of sound. I love to listen to myself sing or hear my loved ones voice. Sometimes when I miss the people I love, I hear their recordings to make myself feel better. I can’t remember ever experiencing complete silence. Even when I am home alone with every sound imaginable turned off around me, there is a strange buzzing in my ears, which i read somewhere means it is your brain trying to repair itself and is failing. Which is kind of sad :s but coming back to the topic, I feel even if I try to keep everything sound free for a while, I feel claustrophobic, its weird I know but I do.
Now coming to why i would be less devastated with the sense of smell is firstly because all other senses are more important to me in everyday life and secondly because loss of smell wont affect the way i perceive and understand my world as much. Yes I wont be able to smell my body odor and might disgust people around me or the taste of food would be toned down as taste and smell our related. And yes i will also not be able to enjoy different fragrances but it does not seem as damaging. It seems live-able like this. My sense of space and time would be intact. I won’t need to depend on others as much and I would be able to independently live my life.
While I know that there are people who lose any of these senses and still manage it but after writing all this I feel blessed to have been born with all of the senses and hope to never go through unfortunate situations that might cause such a loss.
sabmunir 