If given this choice, which one would you choose?

journey-on

If you had to live life without one of your five senses, which one would you choose to give up.....sight, hearing, smell, touch, or taste? And why?

Do you think your view of the world would be a different reality?

I'd have to say my sense of smell, probably because my sense of smell isn't very good anyway. It's probably poor because I smashed my nose against a sidewalk as a kid while trying to be an acrobat on my tricycle.

W

averyniceguy

None! I am already deaf since birth!

journey-on

Finally Free: Did you know that the sense of smell is supposed to be the sense that triggers memory more than any other. I know in my own case, one smell of Johnson's Paste Wax, and I'm 8 yrs. old again standing on mama's just-waxed floor, all the windows opened, a cool breeze wafting through the house, and her telling us kids to put clean socks on so we could "skate" through the house (polish the floors for her, in other words). I have a whole list of special fragrances that trigger such memories for me. I have a Mary Magdelene rose whose fragrance is delectible! To look at it, it is nothing out of the ordinary as far as roses go. But, the smell moves me to the point of "spiritual" experience.

Averyniceguy: I remember you mentioning this before in one of your posts. Having never experienced hearing at all, do you think you pay more attention to details with your other senses? When I was eleven years old, my best friend was a blind-from-birth girl who totally fascinated me. I would watch her use her sense of touch as if it were eyes. Her delicate finger tips would softly sweep across a page of braille and she would read like any other kid. We would spend hours sewing doll clothes and hers always looked better than mine. Her fingers moved in rapid motion and went from stroking to tapping as if they were recording in some unique fashion a multitude of things from position to thickness, to smoothness. I loved her and loved watching her. She also played piano beautifully.

VoidEater

Taste. While eating would become just a bland habit to stay alive, the other senses are too important - I would not be able to navigate in the physical world in the same way. I have partial hearing loss, and think I know what it would be like to lose the rest; I am legally blind without corrective lenses, so I think I have an idea of what it might be like to be without the rest. Without touch, my body cuold be too easily damaged without my knowing. I rely on smell quite a bit to know what's going on in my environment and what needs attention.

Smell and taste are so intrinsically linked...without one, I wonder what the other would be like?

Finally-Free

Did you know that the sense of smell is supposed to be the sense that triggers memory more than any other.

That might explain why my memory is so bad. (some may argue that it's selective)

Every time I smell vinegar I remember Sunday dinners after church as a kid, my dad's potato salad, roast beef, gravy, and dessert.

W

snowbird

I would choose to give up touch because at my age, I already know just about how everything feels.

I love seeing and hearing those I love. I also like the taste of many different foods. It has been noted that if one sense is missing, the others are magnified so as to compensate for the lost sense.

I believe with a heightened sense of sight, sound, and taste, I wouldn't miss the sense of touch all that much.

Sylvia

cognizant dissident

I'm going to say taste because if I keep "smell". I'll have 95% of taste anyway. Did you know your sense of smell is almost totally responsible for the subtle taste of foods. It is possible to make out taste of very salty, for sour, very sweet, or very bitter without smell, but very hard to identify a particular food while smell is blocked. In my case that might be a good thing as I need to lose weight!

Cog

zanex

id give up my ears....been signing since birth so....seems to make sense to me. Being deaf that is....

LtCmd.Lore

My intitial reaction was smell, because I don't use it...

I don't need smell to work on computers so my job would be safe. Nature hates me anyway, and the last time I tried to stop and smell the roses I inhaled a bug.

But I might actually give up taste. That would also not harm my job or day-to-day life. BUT it would enable me to eat only healthy things that I wouldn't otherwise eat if I could taste it. I could go on the perfect diet. Eat broccoli, and cabbage, and all my veggies and fruit, without being tempted to eat chocolate. I would drink water instead of Pepsi with every meal.

So I'd either give up taste or smell. It would be a tough decision, but I'm pretty sure taste would be the one to go.

If given this choice, which one would you choose?

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