in love with the senses

question: if you could only choose one of your five senses to live this life with, which one would you choose?

it’s not a question meant to be answered. that would be cruel. because when I think about this question, it only makes me realize, with a bit of anxiety, how I cannot live without music. how empty life would feel if I couldn’t taste a strawberry, or if I had to dance and love without feeling touch. and let’s not forget about the intoxication of scent - I could outstretch my fingers like a blind man, searching for the source of a scent. and to see? what is more fundamental to my life’s work, to noticing beauty and truth in the everyday, than the deep art of seeing?

but it occurs to me - more and more these days - how half-heartedly we actually fully use and appreciate our sensing abilities. how little we actually enjoy our full powers of absorption. maybe not even half. how often have you inhaled a meal in between meetings without truly tasting it, or looked past a sunset without actually seeing it? how often have you touched and been touched without feeling fully into your body?

it’s because we are too busy caught up in the web of information — bits of data, half scrolled and half consumed, and it mirrors itself in our minds. but is the thinking life truly more valuable than the sensing, feeling life?

we’ve been diseased with FOMO, and I can’t help but wonder, what are we missing out on when we are so disassociated and disembodied from our present moment lives, here and now. are we not simply getting by, resigning ourselves to living a half-life? and what is more of a waste, than this?