Senses

One night, I was in my house alone, waiting for my then partner to come home from her afternoon shift. I was watching TV when I heard her open the door. As soon as she came in she started yelling at me about gas! It seems that I had cooked my dinner a couple of hours before and left the gas on. I had been walking into the kitchen, sitting metres from the stove and hadn’t smelled anything for over two hours. Whereas, she had smelled the gas the second she opened the front door. Her carrying on was a wakeup call that my lack of smell could seriously harm my health!

So, back to Krznaric's book. He talks about how sight, since the invention of the printing press has become our main sense. But in doing this we miss out on using our other senses to their full potential. In the book, he quotes Helen Keller " I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea, or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. What a witless masquerade is this seeing!..." How many of us really look at things today. I mean, taking the time to have a really good long look at something. What we need to do is practice training our senses, to get back the wonder of things, to have a really good look at things and make sense of them, rather than just a casual look. What we need to do is close our eyes and let our ears hear. Listen, how many sounds can you hear? Perhaps you hear traffic, or birdsong, people talking. I can hear all these right now. I can also hear my fingers tapping the keyboard and the fan is making a whirring noise on the computer. There is rain striking the window.

I am going to start to practice noticing. It is too late for my sense of smell, but I am going to practice listening to the sounds around me and practice real seeing.