Would I really favor an imbalanced sensory array?

Do you think there’s a sense you can do without?

Honestly, I’m not sure which sense I would give up if I had the choice. I happen to be find of my sight, and even though it’s flawed I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Nor would I my hearing, my sense of taste, sense of smell, or my sense of touch.

With all due respect to people with visual impairment like Stevie wonder or Ray Charles, I wouldn’t want to grope around in a world of darkness, especially after knowing what it looks like. I wouldn’t want to have to go without being able to see physical beauty ever again, or to see my wife or daughter smiling at me; that would be especially tough. Plus, how would I proofread my writing?

I would hate to be without my sense of hearing because I enjoy both music and spoken word audio; I use my hearing for a lot of things, actually. We all do, and so the hearing would be sorely missed. Try to imagine living in a soundless world; not being able to hear people coming up behind you, not being able to hear people talking to you when your back is turned – not hearing anything at all. I’m certain I wouldn’t want that!

Then there’s a sense of taste. I wouldn’t . . . it wouldn’t break my heart if I couldn’t taste anymore, but then what would the experience of eating be like? Would it be like chewing Styrofoam? I don’t necessarily have to taste the food I’m eating – heaven knows I rarely do – but I do like the taste of food. Let’s put it this way: if there’s a sense I would give up, taste would be in the running as a candidate.

For that matter, smell would also be one of those. It would be nice not to have to smell all the unpleasant smells in the world; however, there is a certain component of smelling that is vital to survival. That being said, in the modern world it might not be as necessary as something like sight or hearing. Plus I wouldn’t have to smell myself breaking wind all the time, which would be alright with me (sorry for your luck though!)

How about the sense of touch? Let’s talk about all the diseases that they used to call leprosy. From what I understand, in biblical times what they called leprosy was actually a spectrum of diseases that all caused the degeneration of skin tissue over time. Some of these are not degenerative diseases but desensitizing ones, and once you lose sensation in your extremities, the risk goes up that you’re damaging the tissue by gripping too hard or something similar, and subsequently causing tissue loss via bodily resorption. I may not even have that exactly right, but the idea is sound as to why I would not give up my sense of touch: not to mention, there’s plenty of things I’d like to still be able to feel with my very sensitive sense of touch.

So then the question comes down to, which sense what I give up in order to heighten another sense, and which sense would that be? Sure, I could give up my sense of taste or my sense of smell in order to heighten something like… my sense of sight? Then that makes me wonder if that would really heighten my sense of sight, or would it merely bring me to everyone else’s level, since I’m significantly nearsighted without vision correction? And even if I got the old eagle-eye, what the heck would I do with that?

Here, I know! How about I give up my sense of decency to heighten my sense of direction? Then I could be a traveling flasher. I could ditch my sense of self-worth in order to ratchet up my sense of comic timing, then I could probably make pretty good money in stand-up comedy. Or here’s a good one: I will squash my sense of duty to inflate my sense of community; maybe I’ll luck out and break even, right?

No, I’ve got a lot of sense, but I wouldn’t give up my sense for scents or redistribute in any sense, because I’m not sure if I could consider, and be prepared for, all of the possible drawbacks of such a trade, let alone any advantages I might miss.

In my honest opinion, that’s just common sense.

This post was prompted by today’s Daily Post prompt.