SENSE Defined
"A sense is a biological system that allows an organism to perceive stimuli from the environment, typically involving the five traditional senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. It can also refer to a general feeling, understanding, or good judgment in various contexts.”1
I ask - “What makes sense to you?”- to contemplate, not to question. Do you take time to study your relationship to the world around you from a sensory perspective? Our senses permeate our being and inform our perception whether good, bad, or indifferent. This fascinating engagement is challenging to decipher and yet we feel the effects infinitely. Our sensory exposure is predominantly uninvited and contributes to the multifaceted aspects of the Self. In regards to what could be created
with our senses, a mystery ensues.
In this passage below by Lewis Thomas, he expresses this idea...
“I should think we might fairly gauge the future of biological science, centuries ahead, by estimating the time it will take to reach a complete, comprehensive understanding of odor. It may not seem a profound enough problem to dominate all the life sciences, but it contains, piece by piece, all the mysteries. Smoke: tobacco burning, coal smoke, wood-fire smoke, leaf smoke. Most of all, leaf smoke. This is the only
odor I can will back to consciousness just by thinking about it. I can sit in a chair, thinking, and call up clearly to mind the smell of burning autumn leaves, coded and stored away somewhere in a temporal lobe, firing off explosive signals into every part of my right hemisphere. But nothing else: if I try to recall the thick smell of Edinburgh in winter, or the accidental burning of a plastic comb, or a rose, or a glass of wine, I cannot do this; I can get a clear picture of any face I feel
like remembering, and I can hear whatever Beethoven quartet I want to recall, but except for the leaf bonfire I cannot really remember a smell in its absence. To be sure, I know the odor of cinnamon or juniper and can name such things with accuracy when they turn up in front of my nose, but I cannot imagine them into existence.”2
The sense of SMELL is the language of mind, body, and soul. While it forms and functions, it is simultaneously fleeting. Holding hands with the other senses, it roams the universe, tapping us with its gestures.
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