If you had to lose one of your five senses, what would it be? A friend and I were discussing this not long ago and we came to the conclusion that the easiest two to lose would be your sense of smell and your sense or your sense of taste. For those who may have skipped that day of first grade, here are the five senses we are talking about…

• Taste
• Smell
• Sight
• Touch
• Sound

I, as usual decided to put more thought into the question than was completely necessary and decided that I would rank my senses in the following order.

Touch –> Sight –> Sound –> Smell –> Taste

Where as touch is of course at the top of the list of importance. Sure it would be terrible to not be able to see or hear anything, but if you can’t feel anything with your hands… you don’t know what a penny feels like, you don’t know the heat of a campfire, you don’t know the softness of a blanket, you don’t know the comfort of a hand… it would be very depressing.

So my friend that I was discussing this with is already lacking one of these senses, lucky for her it is second to the bottom of the least important, the sense of smell. It is sad though, she can’t smell flowers or a home cooked meal!

Let’s remove each sense and see what a typical day would be like.

[no taste]
You would go about your day in normal fashion without the pleasures of tasting food. The upside is you don’t taste some foods, which are not too tasty. You could eat all the healthy / nasty foods you like and wouldn’t bat an eye. Overall, you wouldn’t suffer too much, you would get used to it. Our world does not revolve specifically around people with a sense of taste.

[no smell]
Throughout the day you wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. The only time this lack of sense would really come into play is when others are around you commenting on a smell. It would be only then that you would realize what you are missing. I love the smells of different things, so it would be rough knowing what you are missing, but same as taste, our world doesn’t revolve specifically around people with a sense of smell. You would survive just fine

[no sound]
Without being able to hear anything, we start delving into the senses that would really impact your life. Without sound, you have a much more difficult time communicating. You would have to learn to read lips and sign most likely. Watching TV or a movie, you would always have to watch with captions. Phone conversations would be out, but you would still be able to text message. If someone calls your name from the other side of a room, you wouldn’t know. Going to a symphony concert would leave you feeling empty, as you can feel the vibrations of a crescendo in you chest, but no epiphany from a grand major chord would be reached. Our world does nearly require a sense of sound. It would be very difficult to go any time without being able to hear.

[no sight]
Plain and simple, lacking this sense would be terrible. Every day life would be made very difficult. Just think about everything you have seen just today, and then think about not having seen it. How different would your life be? You wouldn’t be able to drive, you would need assistance from some form of apparatus whether dog or cane to just move about. Our world is not designed for a person who cannot see, period. Jobs would be very limited. Going to a zoo would be pointless as you wouldn’t be able to see the mane of a lion or the stripes of a zebra. You would just smell the elephants and probably be rather miserable.

[no touch]
From a life long standpoint, a lack of the sense of touch would be the most terrible in my opinion. You can live everyday and be fine without being able to see or hear. You have comforts in other things. You could still hug a stuffed animal, or cuddle with a loved one for a movie. Without the sense of touch, you could still do that, but it wouldn’t have the same impact. Someone comes up from behind you, placing their hand on your shoulder… you wouldn’t know until they made known their presence. There have been studies about people with dogs. Petting their dogs brings comfort not only to the dog, but to the owner as well. If you had a dog, would the same comfort be had from the company kept and petting the dog?

Pretty much lacking any one sense would not be all too much fun. Lacking more than one at a time would be just plain rough.

But what do you think, which of the senses do you consider the most important? Which one would you think would be the easiest to give up?

That’s all for now, this is turning into a very long week…

• Jason

(ps… note the tag for this post… hah, i thought it was funny)