This is Day 11 of the 21-Day Journaling Challenge held in Nov 2011. The challenge is now over but you can do the tasks in your own time. Visit the overview page for all the challenge tasks.
Hi everyone – Welcome to Day 11 of 21DJC! :)Yesterday’s question was: “Who Do You Enjoy Spending Time With?“. (Read the responses.) A number of you immediately kicked off your answers by saying “Myself”, which I found somewhat alarming given the intent of the question wasn’t to ask you to “choose” between spending time with yourself or others. (Perhaps I could have made the question clearer when I wrote the post.)While I recognize the merit of enjoying time with yourself (I definitely enjoy my alone time, and I think it’ll be alarming if one doesn’t enjoy being with oneself), the intent of yesterday’s question is to make you aware of who you enjoy spending time with, know why you enjoy spending time with them, and appreciate them for being in your life. That’s the first objective.The second objective, which is more subtle, is to support you in making empowering friendships. By being aware of the traits that resonate with you, you can consciously gravitate towards the people who share those traits. This helps you to make friendships that support you, friendships that you bring the best out of you.This is not an attack towards introverts, because I myself enjoy introvertism. Neither is it an avocation to be an extrovert. Extroverts are people who enjoy spending time with others over spending time by themselves, while introverts are people who prefer alone time over social time. Whether you are an introvert or extrovert though, you can enjoy time with yourself and time with others at the same time – it’s not a mutually exclusive relationship.Yesterday’s question was about identifying who you enjoy spending time among people you already spend time with, not about asking you to choose between whether you enjoy spending time alone or whether you enjoy spending time with others.There will always be certain people we like to hang around more, compared to other people in our life. For example, I believe some of you enjoy spending time with the other participants here, during challenges. Who are these people we like to spend time with? Why do we like to spend time with them? And how can we meet more of such people, so as to expand our consciousness to greater heights?At the end of the day, such people help to bring the best out of ourselves. By consciously building these friendships, we create a powerful support network that supports us in our growth journey.For me, I enjoy spending time with people who have high consciousness. People who focus on what matters in life, and not daily trivialities and gossip. People who have a keen willingness to learn and grow. People who are earnest in their communication, and do not speak behind other people’s backs. People who pursue their passions and make the best out of life. People who give space for others to grow and don’t impose their beliefs on others. People who believe in working hard and are willing to work hard, as opposed to people who skive and try to look for the easy way out.This awareness help me realize why I feel drained when I hang out around lazy people who often complain, procrastinate, and gossip about others. It also helps me realize why I feel energized when I’m around certain people, because our energies rub off each other. Hence, I make sure to limit the time I spend with the former group, and spend more time with people in the latter group. Doing so helps me to maintain a positive, conscious state of mind.With that said, let’s now move to today’s question!
Hi everyone – Welcome to Day 11 of 21DJC! :)Yesterday’s question was: “Who Do You Enjoy Spending Time With?“. (Read the responses.) A number of you immediately kicked off your answers by saying “Myself”, which I found somewhat alarming given the intent of the question wasn’t to ask you to “choose” between spending time with yourself or others. (Perhaps I could have made the question clearer when I wrote the post.)While I recognize the merit of enjoying time with yourself (I definitely enjoy my alone time, and I think it’ll be alarming if one doesn’t enjoy being with oneself), the intent of yesterday’s question is to make you aware of who you enjoy spending time with, know why you enjoy spending time with them, and appreciate them for being in your life. That’s the first objective.The second objective, which is more subtle, is to support you in making empowering friendships. By being aware of the traits that resonate with you, you can consciously gravitate towards the people who share those traits. This helps you to make friendships that support you, friendships that you bring the best out of you.This is not an attack towards introverts, because I myself enjoy introvertism. Neither is it an avocation to be an extrovert. Extroverts are people who enjoy spending time with others over spending time by themselves, while introverts are people who prefer alone time over social time. Whether you are an introvert or extrovert though, you can enjoy time with yourself and time with others at the same time – it’s not a mutually exclusive relationship.Yesterday’s question was about identifying who you enjoy spending time among people you already spend time with, not about asking you to choose between whether you enjoy spending time alone or whether you enjoy spending time with others.There will always be certain people we like to hang around more, compared to other people in our life. For example, I believe some of you enjoy spending time with the other participants here, during challenges. Who are these people we like to spend time with? Why do we like to spend time with them? And how can we meet more of such people, so as to expand our consciousness to greater heights?At the end of the day, such people help to bring the best out of ourselves. By consciously building these friendships, we create a powerful support network that supports us in our growth journey.For me, I enjoy spending time with people who have high consciousness. People who focus on what matters in life, and not daily trivialities and gossip. People who have a keen willingness to learn and grow. People who are earnest in their communication, and do not speak behind other people’s backs. People who pursue their passions and make the best out of life. People who give space for others to grow and don’t impose their beliefs on others. People who believe in working hard and are willing to work hard, as opposed to people who skive and try to look for the easy way out.This awareness help me realize why I feel drained when I hang out around lazy people who often complain, procrastinate, and gossip about others. It also helps me realize why I feel energized when I’m around certain people, because our energies rub off each other. Hence, I make sure to limit the time I spend with the former group, and spend more time with people in the latter group. Doing so helps me to maintain a positive, conscious state of mind.With that said, let’s now move to today’s question!21DJC Day 11
For most of us, we are blessed with 5 senses – Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smell and Touch. We have a 6th sense that is Intuition, but it’s not in the scope of today’s question. Today, I’d like you to think about this:Out of Your 5 Senses, Which is the Most Important to You, and Why?
Your Task Today:
- Reflect and answer today’s question. There’s no word limit – whether minimum or maximum. Write as few or as many words as you want. It’s all up to what you want to express!
- Share your answer. After you are done writing, copy and paste your answer in the comments area and post it there.
- Check out other participants’ answers. Other participants will be sharing their answers too, so feel free to read and reply to their answers. This is a group course, so let’s support each other in these 21 days.
Look forward to reading your answers! :D
((Images: Empty book for journaling, Woman breathing))
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just read that, sense of smell and taste are related:
75% of taste is contributed by smell. When you have a cold, usually you can’t smell anything. Consequently, you usually can’t taste anything, either.
Out of 5 senses for me sense of sight is most important. That’s because without it I will be dependent on others even for moving from one place to another or to get something and it will be very hard to perceive the world.
It is definitely between sight and hearing, and if I absolutely had to make a decision, I honestly don’t know if I could.
I would definitely miss seeing my loved ones’ faces, flora and fauna, the wonder of the world, great movies, books and more books.
I would also miss very much hearing my loved ones’ voice, hearing the birds singing, the wind blowing, the waves crashing to shore.
But…I suppose, if it came right down to it, I would chose to keep my sight.
I think the most important sense to me is sight, I really don’t know why, it’s so important to me. But when ever I look so deep inside of me, it feels so scarey, if I can’t see. Thanks
The sense of sight. Physiologically speaking, this is why we have occipital lobe occupies large part of our brain area in total. We also rely heavily on our vision – more than other creatures (e.g. dog relies on their smell, birds on their navigation system that we’re completely lacking, etc).
Most important of all, we humans retrieve lots of information through our eyes, where we derive our emotions from: from happiness, sadness, and many other feelings you could imagine. Not saying that other senses are not as important, because all 5 of them are working together, but given the choice… I think my sense of sight is the one.
Sight and Touch are the most important to me.
Without vision I would not be able to see the beautiful world and even can’t do the work into which I am. Vision allows me to see whats happening around me…..beautiful flowers, mountains, birds, smiles of my loved ones.
The sense of touch is also very important to me. Feeling of touch, a hug from a loved one can be a lot in itself. Touch is necessary for life. Imagine the touch of mother to a new born baby….arms to hold and caress the baby, for which their is no substitute in this world. That sense of motherly touch can’t be bought anywhere. Its a feeling…..feeling of love and care. :)
I am going to have to say hearing – words have the most impact on me – I am definitely auditory. Music has an impact on me. I enjoy listening to the sounds of my environment. The sound of rain falling, the wind blowing, thunderstorms, coyotes running through the forest, the birds in the morning, the ocean surf, friends voices – Yes! Definitely hearing!
I would say that out of the 5 senses the one more important for me is sight I really guess so. I love watching at 360° when I’m somewhere. I do take attention to the place, people, their faces. Every morning and every evening I like watching the sky when I open and close my shutters. At this moment the countryside is wonderful: tree leaves are getting from green, to yellow, brown and vines as well. But it’s true that I like it anytime of the year. The view is always different from my windows I like it and I do appreciate and cherish it everyday.
I like photography and I really enjoy going to photography exhibitions. It’s a kind of food for health.
In my dreams sometimes crazy sights come in, sight is everywhere, always …
Taste and smell are certainly pleasurable, but secondary. Sight and hearing are beautiful, but abstract. Touch is what allows me to experience my world in a concrete fashion. It keeps me grounded, literally and figuratively. It pulls me out of my mind and reassures me that the world hasn’t disappeared while I wasn’t looking. Touch is affection, vibration, location, texture, comfort, consistency, manipulation, recognition, warmth, and solidity.
Well said sis! Yours is much more well phrased then mine but we are coming from the same page to be sure :)
Sight. Touch. Are the first words popping up by glancing the question.
I think the most important is to touch, to be touched. Skin on skin. Fabrics. Closeness.
Or is it the language of the eyes? Being able to see the light change. Watching nature. Looking at my kids. Seeing my husband smile. Driving down from a hill and seeing the sea. Smiles. Eyes. The change of the seasons.
I can’t imagine how I would feel when I lost just 1 of my senses…
Smell, taste…connected senses. How to enjoy food without those?
Hearing.. not being able to hear my children’s laughter, no sounds, no music
The sense I’m most aware of, is my vision. Enjoying my road to work, how the light differs every day. The light up here is so insanely awesome!
Touch must be the number one sense. Without that I don’t think there is life.
(I once read something about a bunch of babies, who were fed, but received nothing else and they just died. They could not survive, because there was nobody to hold them, to touch them!)
Just tonight when I put my son to bed, I gave him a lot of kisses on his face and he commented grinning that he liked it, that it tickled a bit and if I could give him some more
Without the sense of touching that would have been impossible.
Or yesterday at work, I give and get a lot of hugs from ‘my’ group.
It’s very essential and very basic.
I guess, actually, that it’s pretty biological…..
In our high developed, food-comes-from-the-supermarket and milk-comes-from-a-carton-society the senses of hearing and sight will rank highest, because we do not have to rely that much on our smell/taste senses for survival!
About the vision vs. hearing, I think that hugely depends on learning style; do you learn easiest from seeing things or from hearing things? For me, that’s definitely vision. I need to picture stuff.
In short; I’m celebrating my sense of vision on a daily basis, while I’m way less aware of touch, of how immensely important that sense is to me! It’s a bit a forgotten sense.
So thanks for a supernice question!!
Thanks for the gift of celebrating not just today, but also with some of the other questions…thinking about who is important to me, who I enjoy spending time with, makes me both thankful and happy.
Wow this is actually toughest question so far… I’ve been thinking about it whole day and i am still not certain about my answer…
So the most obvious answer would be sight, our world today is visually oriented and i am also mostly relaying on my eyes. But i will have to say that i would like to sharpen my other senses as much. I will also say on this that i have contact lenses and without them i can’t see very far, but sometimes i don’t wear my contacts intentionally so i can be focused on all those things and people close to me, that also prevents eye and mind to wander elsewhere.
Second very important sense is touch, because for me touch transfers energy and love to people and it is very important to feel something for me more than to hear something.
On the third place i would put sense of smell because smell trigger emotions and memories sometimes..Like winter tea or fresh fruits in the summer…Christmas and sea smells always put me to a great place and i use aromatherapy sometimes.
Without hearing we couldn’t hear music or beautiful sounds of nature or voice of a loved one and without taste we couldn’t enjoy beautiful foods of this world.
I think that conclusion to this question is that we should all be grateful for those magnificent senses that we have which helps us experience the world as we are.
I would have to say sight. All the colors, the light, the shapes, our perspective. It makes me feel nice when I see a sunset or the stars at night. I also love reading because you receive what the writer feels and how they think.
Sense of sight is the most important to me ‘coz it is the core of the all the senses. Through eyesight, we learn to receive messages without hearing the words through reading and by the body languages. This goes with sense of taste (food) when we see someone reacts to a taste of bitter or salty food, through facial expression that the food is not a comfy food at all. With sense of touch, we see people react to certain situation or object by removing or avoiding themselves that causes discomfort or pain gives us the opportunity to learn that the other person is experiencing unpleasant feeling. Through our eyesight, we can adapt communicating and relating to others, as well as receiving messages through body and sign languages despite of lack of sense of hearing. This is proven because I a R,N. for 20 years now, born with bilateral hearing loss. That is why I thank God for my wonderful life.
In spite of what people may say, the sense of sight is the most important – so much so that the other senses do not compare at all with the sense of sight. It is also true that we depend too much on our sight – but it could hardly be otherwise. Zatoichi and other fictional characters are hardly credible in their efforts to prove otherwise.
What we solely hear, smell etc. fades easily from memory and soon becomes unimportant.
It happens sometimes also that we are blinded by too much seeing – we then see better, so to speak, by merely closing the eyes.
I am guessing this question may have something to do with the learning models someone came up with.
You got me thinking how we know and feel things. Thinking naively, i.e. without involving psychology or philosophy, I am of the opinion that we know, feel and remember an event as a mental image. I know the manner of this image – but never precisely, and must wonder a few more years before I understand this mental phenomenon better.
So, being of the opinion that basic mental phenomena are similar to seeing, I declare sight to be the most important.
The sense of hearing is the most important to me. There’s something about the loss of hearing that makes me think of loneliness, the kind of loneliness as if you’re detached from the rest of the world.
Of course there are always methods to adapt so maybe I’m just being melodramatic!
This is a very intriguing question no doubt about that, as all the 5 senses seem to interact to convey different, vital information to the brain about a single issue in question. But as we know or experienced
before, we know that, although all 5 are important, it is common that one can do without some of them. We see blind people(sight) managing with use of the other 4 senses only. So do the deaf
(hearing). So important are all senses working together that, for instance if the issue in question was a loaf of bread, the eyes(sight) conveys to the brain that its brown. The the nose will say that it( smells )nice and well cooked. The tongue(taste) will then convey that its either salty or sugary and tasty. Then by holding it(touch) the brain will know that its soft or even crunchy. However,especially with food, the hearing may not be put to use, meaning that, although in most cases, senses work together to convey an accurate information, in some cases this might not be the case.
Therefore to me the most important of all senses is the sight. I can see fire and tell that its hot without
touching it or even before i could smell the burning,in case i am far from the blaze. I could detect danger by just seeing e.g i can tell that a fast moving car is coming towards me and get out of the way. I can differentiate between a ripe apple and a raw one. i can notice and appreciate beauty by a single glance without the need of the other 4 senses. All in all, the sense of sight means that i can stay out of danger and be independent to a degree that people without it can not be. And lastly,i can read easily, so that i can acquire knowledge to enable me to grow and live a fulfilled life.
21DJC Day 11 – Out of Your 5 Senses, Which is the Most Important to You, and Why?
I read this challenge before I headed out to work this morning and the question has been quietly resting on my mind since I first read it.
I am sure I am over analyzing my answer given this is a journaling exercise but that’s the part of this challenge that I am enjoying the most. I take every question and make my answers count for me!
I stopped at a red light on the way to work. I listened as the rain hit the roof of my car and I thought how I enjoy the sound of the rain, in my car, at the cabin when the fire is cozy. I thought of my grandchildren and how I love to hear the laughter of them and how the words, I Love You Nana, resonate to my heart and soul…
I tried a new cereal for breakfast, just for the fun of it. I savored the new taste and asked myself, would it be detrimental to my existence if I could not taste this cereal, my lunch that would follow or this evening’s supper? No matter what food I think of, I can’t think of anything that makes me feel like, Oh My, I would miss the taste of that! Okay well yes I would miss the taste of Chianti …. Yes I would… Insert smile here…
So then I said by what about the smell of turkey cooking on Christmas day? The aroma that cooking leaves in the air. The smell of a Christmas Tree? And then there’s touch! If I lose my sense of touch does that mean I cannot “feel” it when my grandchildren hug me? How can I give the grandkids a bath if I cannot determine the water temp? How would I enjoy the evening fires at the cabin with my husband if I cannot feel the warmth of the fire?
I asked myself all of those things, not at once but randomly throughout the day as I completed different tasks, spoke with coworkers, talked to family, had my usual day.
I concluded that of all the gifts good health has afforded me I am so thankful that I have all of those senses. Selfishly I pray I never lose any of them. I know in my heart of hearts when I pick them apart, I pray I can always see! I want to see my grandchildren grow; I want to see their expressions when they pick their gifts from under the tree. I want to see Sunara’s expression to the moon at 1AM, I want to see Olivia’s expression when we crunch a dry leaf in the park and when Grandpy pushes her too high in the swing. I want to see Mego’s expression when she pulls a trout from the frozen pond with Grandpy, when she rides the quad with him, when she and Nana hit 52 on bounce or bust! I want to See Nathan’s smile and his eyes closed when he coddles to my chest for a nap. I want to see all that my husband and I share when we hike. I want to see before my husband does the cache we are desperately searching to find!!! I want to see my puppy when I get off work!
I don’t want my world to be dark, I don’t want to have to try and remember colors, imagine what my children will look like a year from now. I want to SEE…………..
Having said that, I pray God is close as I type and that God knows I am thankful for all the gifts of all my senses…………….
Heartwarming question!!!!
Sight is the sense the most important to me. Because without it, you can’t physically guide your paths. Even if I strongly think that the innner sense of sight is sufficient to lead you.
the most important to me is sight, because it allows me to see my parents and brother’s smiling faces, the rainbows, the sunsets, the stars and hopefully one day i will get to see the face of my soulmate :-). without sight i wouldnt be able to enjoy my two keys interests: books and movies. Sight is also what makes my memories so vivid.. be it good or bad, it has made me smile and grow stronger..Sight makes you believe better!!
i love my eyes and my sight.. Thankyou God!!
Touch- not going to die without it
smell- could live with out it
taste- not concerned
hearing- oooooo…. might want this one. don’t know what i would do if i couldn’t listen to music. but then again Beethoven did it so it must be possible:)
sight- gosh i would hate to lose this one! Sight is definitely the most important to me because that is, at least for me, how i interact with the world. while music and hearing come in a close second, i feel like i could still function without hearing but if i lost my sight it would be much more difficult to try and function in the world non-the-less appreciate it. no more beautiful vistas, no more staring into another’s eyes, no more watching amazing movies or plays, and no more star gazing! Really! I don’t know how i could live without my sense of sight:)
Like everyone sight is most important sense to me. All five senses all equally important, i am opting for sight because i can immidiately feel it by closing our eyes. Touch sense, hearing sense, smell sense and taste senses can not be appreciated easily. I am saying this because i am experiencing lack of touch sense in forefinger due to some infection. Its very hard to choose one over the other once you suffered.
Two answers again…past and present…or maybe present and desired future.
In the past, it would have been sight for me. My love for reading books and learning new things is great. So is the desire to see new things and people, see the joy in their faces. That is just amazing to me. So if i had taken this challange a few months ago, i would have set sight as number1..and touch as the last one. I have never enjoyed the touch sense. Makes me feel creepy….and uncomfortable. I dont hug. Simple waves and hand shakes have to do! Dont even talk about anything deeper than that!
However, in the past couple of months, things have been different. I have started to appreciate the sense of touch a lot more. We have lots more sensor endings on our skin. We can feel temperate, and softness, and the finishing of the material….and all sorts of stuff. A hug makes people feel better…more secure and complete. A warm handshake makes them feel welcome. Touch may be the strongest….or most important sense to me after all. Now all i need to do is to figure out how to incorporate it in my life! Be a good toucher! Nice intentions….nice actions….great hope for a better future.
Hands down (no pun intended), it would be sight. I am an astronomer by training and my whole essence has evolved around what I can see and observe. Although I am interested in the touch, smell and sounds as well, without sight I would be lost. I know if I were to give up sight, my other senses would be enhanced and I would probably enjoy my music a bit more. My husband has amazing visual and auditory perception, but for me, where my vision dominates my importance, I tend to undermine my other senses. He reminds me of that so I do now take more time to appreciate the world through all my senses. But without sight, I would be really need a phase shift in how I approach life. If if were to happen, it can be done, but it would take a lot of practice and the right attitude. I just appreciate my gift of vision every day. When I see a blind or visually impaired person, I get the reminders of gratitude for my sight since I value its importance so highly. It is such a part of me. I am a visual person. I love to see what I create. I love using what I see to create new things. I love reading. I love watching a sunset or sunrise or moonset or moonrise. I love looking at the stars at night. I love looking at color. I love the view from atop a mountain summit or a castle’s precipice. I love seeing differences in similar/related items like flowers, animal prints, leaves, birds, etc. and using what I see to make observations and conclusions about this beautiful world and universe.
I am glad you didn’t ask which of our senses we would give up if we had to because that is a much harder question for me.
I have to say I think touch is the most important to me. It allows me to do the things that I love that are creative, to console someone in pain, to sooth someones hurt through massage, to connect with another person without using any words or having a common language.
All of the senses are so very inter-dependant that it is hard to say one is more important than another.
There are many that live very full and rich lives with out sight. You can see through touch, using your hands.
There are many who live a very rich life without their hearing, and you can “hear” some through vibrations and resonance that is also a part of touch.
Taste and smell are trickier because they are directly linked to each other. Without smell you would have almost no sense of taste anyway as we taste primarily through our sense of smell. However touching does not help you taste…you could only really discern texture.
Touching does not help you smell…but as much as I LOVE wonderful beautiful smells, I have become so sensitive to strong, bad or pungent smells with my migraines that there are days I wish I had a less developed sense of smell or none at all. Even at the risk of losing my sense of taste since most of what I can eat these days doesn’t rate high up there on the most delectable things you eaten in your life!! lol
So, after this analysis, I would stick with Touch as my choice of most important sense to ME. I am a very tactile person and do alot of hand crafts and activiites that I would be sad and lost without them as my therapy and happy place :)
When I hug someone, I want to be able to feel them hug me back :hug:
Sight!!! My immediate gut reaction was horror to think about losing my sight. My uncle who was my role model
was blind and I more aware of his blindness than some other senses. I appreciate and want to share the beauty of God’s world that we see. Light is wonderful to me. Shadow adds so much depth to light. Color can be awesome.
This question has made me very appreciative that I have the use of all my senses now! Funny how we take such basic gifts for granted, and worry about other things in life so much more.
Anyway, for me it’s hard to choose between sight and touch.
I’m not really a touchy person, so when i choose to show affection by touch.. it means something more. With my boyfriend I enjoy the affection we get to show through touch. Whether it’s a hug, leaning on his shoulder, or simply walking with fingers intertwined together. So grateful for that :)
I think I would still have to go with sight though. Sight enables me to look at faces, simply by looking at someone, their facial expressions, body language.. is a kind of communication. Sight gives me that additional communication, to take non-verbal cues. Being able to see also allows me to appreciate beauty and art around. I love painting, reading… and as the saying goes, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. :)
Out of the five senses, I think the most important sense to me is sight. When I’m able to see, I can enjoy the beauty of life, knowing the feeling of the people I like, hence showing my love to them. The sense that move me is certainly touching, but if I can not see, I can’t enjoy it fully.
This question made me reconnect with who I was as a kid in my own memories and those of others.
So as a final answer – for me it’s a hearing.
The hearing was first. My grandparents recall, that when I was around 2 years old, I was already humming a melody with them, when they sang to me. When I close my eyes and listen to the sounds, they provoke associations with different images. When I listen to the good quality music, that is rich with different tembres and melodies, I feel touched, in my imagination I can feel the surrounding. All first half of my life was closely connected to the music. I even dreamed to become musician and studied it (and then gave it up, giving in to naysayers and starting to follow the goals of other people).
Vision follows very closely to this. It’s connected to the field, I’m currently working in. But from what I recall, it’s rather learned appreciation. I’ve had art and artists around me since early childhood, so I obviously learned to appreciate the beauty of sights and at some point it became so natural part of perception, that it was hard to choose now between this and sound.
Taste came next. Through cooking, testing out different spices and combinations. Then smell, aromatherapy and making my own cosmetics. Touch was one of the last senses, that I started to pay attention to.
Obviously, I can’t imagine loosing any of those senses. Not now, when I’ve found a nice balance in satisfying them all, appreciating them and giving importance to them all.
While all of my 5 senses are important and most days people take for granted the enjoyment of having, sight, smell, taste, hearing, and especially touching.
I will have to say the most important one to me is my sight. This has been true since I was younger.
Reason # 1 is this: As far back as I can possibly remember in my life, I have always been terrified of darkness and had horrible nightmares. No tragic event caused this. It just always has been with me. I slept with a night light on and I still do. Since I am an adult now, my fear of the darkness isn’t as terrifying as it was during childhood yet it still bothers me to be in darkness. I also still have nightmares. As I said, these nightmares aren’t triggered by a long ago childhood tragedy, but events in my life as I have grown do effect what my nightmares are about. An example would be that for a year after my grandmother passed away, I had nightmares that were always different but had the same concept in them. I would be chasing her, begging her not to leave me and then she would be gone. I have woken up screaming her name out. I have woken up crying or woke myself up by screaming and crying. If I wake up during a nightmare and my bedroom is filled with complete darkness it causes me to feel afraid, panicky, and I have a harder time realizing my surroundings and getting fully awake to tell the difference between reality and whatever my nightmare may have been about.
Reason # 2 is this: I enjoy talking to people, which requires my hearing of course. However, I would much rather see the person I’m talking to rather than chat through a text message or even over the phone. Watching people’s body language and especially facial expressions tells much more than the words themselves. I can tell when someone is lying to me by the seeing the way they shift, look away, or make a different facial expression.
Reason # 3 is this: With all the bad that goes on in the world, there is also so much beauty if we search for it. Or in my opinion look for it. I live in the mountains of Southwest Virginia and during fall the colors of the leaves are breathtaking. I enjoy seeing my children’s smiles. I love to read a book or examine something new. I love looking back at my photos because they hold within them the story of my life.
So, for me the worst thing I can imagine happening, as far as senses go, would be to lose my eye sight.
Hello Netta,
You have made a very interesting point relating to having nightmares.it is possible that the nightmares you are referring to are the results of events that have taken place around you, which you have seen, and which have stayed in your subconscious. In a different scenario, where you were not gifted with the sense of sight, God forbid this never happens,maybe there were no cause for disturbance at night, just because you never saw and witnessd anyscene which create fear and manifest itself during sleep. an pertinent case study for the Psychoanalyst
Which of my senses is most important to me?
That is incredibly tough – I don’t know which of my shoes is my favorite, but if I lost any of my shoes my life would not be upset. I would not want to imagine being without any one of my senses, too upsetting.
The only way I can approach this question is to assume that I am just saying which I enjoy the most,
Because I really really appreciate them ALL immensely.
The sight – of sunrise, sunset, stars, the water, trees, architecture, art, and people – I truly enjoy and appreciate that.
The sound – of Music is wonderful inspiring and entertaining, the wind in the trees, running water, waves on the shore, birds – all so so nice.
Smell and Taste are associated and most pleasurable – in nature, food, and people.
Touch is also very very wonderful – to touch and be touched – to enjoy a cool swim or a warm shower – to feel the textures of the things around us, to be able to manipulate and create with my hands, to feel the road through my bicycle seat, all of the things that keep us “in touch” with our physical world –
All of our senses are incredibly practical for survival, and amazingly wonderful for the enrichment and joy they bring in to our lives.
To try to pick a favorite, I would have get it down to sight and sound – then it is a very very close call after that – but to complete this assignment – I will pick….. (it came up heads) – sight.
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