As human beings, we are born with five senses. They are sense of touch, hearing, smell, sight and taste. Today we are losing our sense of senses. I do not know the real reasons for the same but may be worth exploring. We need to revive our senses. They not only help us lead a more fulfilling life but will help us add joy to the life of others. The increasing lack of senses is making us live senseless, in society.

Let us start with the sense of touch. Can any of us forget the warmth of a mother’s hug on a day we are feeling low ? This touch is magical. It seems to cure us of everything. It helps us get over our sorrow. It re-energises us to bounce back in life. We get consoled without even a word being spoken. Today we hug each other in the social media and are shy to hug in real life. This is not only because we do not have time to meet each other in person but feel it is less socially respectful to hug someone. Lets give a hug to a person in distress and experience the magical effect on their well being.

If we move to the sense of hearing, it is equally magical. One would always long to be with family members or friends, who are active listeners. We generally tend to speak more than we listen. Let us listen to kids at home, colleagues at work as if our listening will change their world. We can experience that the richness in our relationship becomes qualitatively better to the quality of our listening. Here again, one need not go far away from home to learn. In most of our cases, our parents are good listeners and we have failed to learn from them.

Today we do not have the time to enjoy the fragrance of nature. If we go on a morning walk, the smell of the jasmine, plumeria or parijatam can transcend us to a different world. But, most of us either do not go for a morning walk or jog or cannot recognise and enjoy the smell of these beautiful flowers. This is partly due to our lack of time and supplemented by pollution and lack of flowering trees in our environs. We seem to be losing of ability to sense the smell of flowers around us. If our eyes are blind folded and we are asked to identify different flowers by their smell, many of us may fail to do so and may blame choked noses for the same.

We are also losing our sense of sight. Today, we see only what we want to see. We may not be colour blind by birth but are unable to sport all the colours in the beautiful world because of our lack of sight. Many of us may not have the time to enjoy the shades of the rainbow and explain the Indigo to our kids. We do not get up to the colourful hues of the sky during sun rise or have the time to do so at sunset. We do not have time for holidays to spot animals and birds of different colours and breeds.

Last but not the least is our sense of taste. We seem to have become bland in our taste. We have our breakfast , lunch and dinner in a hurry and also while watching TV or playing on our phone. We do not have time to sit back and enjoy our food. We cannot distinguish between different food varieties and enjoy the diversity of food of different states in our country. If we are blind folded and asked to identify the taste of different ice cream flavours, we may fail to do so.

Life has indeed become senseless – literally and figuratively. But, whom should we blame for this state of affairs. Can we blame our ancestors or our parents ? Can we blame the society or community around us ? It is time to realize that we need to blame ourselves and nobody around us. We are responsible for this pathetic state of our senses.

In a park ( like in the photo above), you can get in touch with all your senses.

It makes sense to revive our senses to day

S Ramesh Shankar