In part because, once again, when you have lost something that was an important part of your life – tasting delicious food – the loss must be endured everytime you consume food merely to survive. How horrible that must be.
It’s called ageusia: bbc.com/news/magazine-23051 … of%20smell.
“Studies have shown that people who lose their sense of smell end up more severely depressed and for longer periods of time than people who go blind, says Prof Barry C Smith, co-director and founder of the Centre for the Study of the Senses.”
And, apparently, one can be born without a sense of smell as well. But, in that case, we are back to not actually losing something you never had.
Here we go again: Back to our machine. The one in which we are both connected to it when you have these experiences. For me, just to have them again in an entirely different context through another’s mind and body would be, well, exquisite. And, of course, there’s the reality of how much the world has changed from the days when, in small communities, nature was ever and always present. In today’s modern industrial world, many go about their days barely aware of nature at all. A few trees, a backyard, a garden perhaps. So, consider yourself very fortunate to have found a way back to it again more fully.
Reminds me somewhat of a song from Peter Gabriel: youtu.be/_OO2PuGz-H8
“He wrote the song about a spiritual experience atop Little Solsbury Hill in Somerset, England.”
Mostly in it’s orientation toward human relationships on this side of the grave rather than in a relationship with God in order to be “saved” in regard to the other side of it. It’s frame of mind was more ecumenical than denominational. Some Unitarians do not consider themselves to be Christians at all. More in sync with the idea of a “oneness” in a universe without Original Sin.
Yes, on an intuitive, visceral, gut level, that’s how I think and feel as well. But there is always that, at times, mysterious gap between what you think you would do in a given situation…one you have never been in…and what you actually do when for whatever reason you are in it. That’s the part where I always focus in on how, given new experiences and relationships and access to ideas, you never really know for certain if something might happen to change your mind.
Well, since you told me you would like to be a mother someday, I can only hope that it is something that you are able to experience. A lot depends on whether you put your mind to making it happen. Though, here, only you know yourself best in that regard.
Worry. Yes, there’s plenty of that. And all the other things. The biggest change of all though is in the realization that this baby, infant, child is wholly dependent on you to give him or her the best chance at whatever they themselves come to believe the “good life” is. It just makes you so much more conservative in regard to certain things. Or it did me.
Here of course you were very, very fortunate indeed. There are so many different paths that children can end up on in this respect. And the part where for many of them it is all beyond their control. That’s always the bottom line: the options that your family provide you with and the options that you are able to pursue yourself. Then passing that down to your own children.
This just popped into my head: How do you do what I do here at the ILP website? Read and submit posts in other words. I found this youtube video: youtu.be/2j2x2miPPDQ
In the video is an older man sitting before a computer screen with two keyboards. He seems to be teaching a class of younger men and women.
Is this in anyway at all relevant to your own experience? I’ve been reading about “Assistive Technology”, but I am terrible when it comes to understanding technology. I suspect the only way I could understand it better is if I was with a blind person able to take me step by step through the experience.