Betrayed by the Senses

My mom posted this on her Facebook and tagged my baby sister in it.  It is so true that we often coordinate sounds, smells or touch with specific feelings.  I recall a radio commercial for a soda (Sierra Mist Natural) that goes like this.  An announcer comes over the air waves and begins discussing about how your ears can deceive you.  You hear a can open and she says something like, "This is the refreshing sound of Sierra Mist Natural, a soda with no artificial flavors and sugar."  You hear another can open and the announcer asks you if it sounds the same.  She then goes on to say that it isn't, that it is a soda with artificial flavorings and sweetners.

Consider when you touch something how you commonly associate it with soft, hard, prickly, sharp or whatever other texture may commonly come to mind.  If you were to touch something blindfolded, do you think you could directly tell what exactly it is?  Or would you only really be able to tell what the texture is?  For example, could you tell a stuffed animal from animal fur?  Or would they both be soft?

The five senses

Sounds is another amazing thing.  How often do we hear things that make us think of other associations we have with that sounds.  Such as in the post above, maybe you hear a pan frying and you may immediately think it is bacon cooking.  You may hear a voice and not be able to tell who it belongs to.

My favorite sense has to be taste/smell.  I love how I can discuss something, such as grapes, and suddenly, it seems as though I am tasting the grapes at that very moment.  Senses are such a wonderful thing, even if they can be deceiving at times.  My sister at one point in time asked an interesting questions to myself and our baby sister.  She asked, "If you had to lose either your sense of hearing or your sense of sight, which would you choose?"

To her surprise, my sister and I both chose to lose our sense of sight.  She said it was dumb, that if you lose that, you can't see anything.  But my baby sister and I are very musically inclined.  We both said the same thing: we couldn't imagine a world without sound, without music, without the voices of our loved ones.  She responded that there are surgeries that can bring the hearing back.  There are those that can bring sight back too, we countered.  What would you do?  Would you rather live in a World of Darkness or a World of Silence?

Well, I am logging off of this until tomorrow.  There is a man sitting in the chair next to mine and a little boy playing in his room.  I have worked a full week and it is time to relax.  I will enjoy the sense I have and celebrate them every day.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and embrace the week as it comes, good, bad, ugly or otherwise.  Remember that today is the only one you with have.  Enjoy "La Vie" as it comes.