Making Sense of It All

There are things that we as the human race seem to take advantage of and as basic as it seems, our senses (you know those five little physiological methods of perception which stand by us through thick and thin) are at the top of the list.

Taste this!  Look over there!  Let your fingers do the walking!  Listen to this!  Do you smell that?  Before we even know it our tongue, eyes, skin, ears and nose are busy sending signals to our brain to let it know what the plan is.  Quicker than email or text messaging, our body’s system of information retrieval beats out even the fastest technological breakthrough every time. Impressive.

In the world of senses, vision, hearing, tasting and touching all seem to get top billing with smell getting the bum rap.  We all know it and if given a choice if we had to do away with one of our senses, the choice always falls on smell.  I’m not sure why, perhaps it is because we associate it with nasty stinker-doodle odors – the kind that can curl your hair.  The superior, finer quality aromas get misdirected and are immediately associated with food which in turn gets eaten and taste gets all the credit.

Smell, as it turns out, appears to be jockeying for better placement in the hierarchy of senses and is quite the formidable opponent.  I have liberated my determined detector to discovery and have found that my other senses will follow their new leader.  Well, except for hearing and I can’t seem to get that one motivated except if I trick it somehow to think that there is something in it for the ears.

But, as fate would have it, I visited a perfume store the other day and if my sniffer didn’t think it died and went to heaven.  I couldn’t help but close my eyes and take in the fragrances.  I didn’t touch, eat or hear anything… I just let my nostrils flap in the breeze and inhale to its heart’s content.  This was a defining moment when I totally comprehended the supremacy of my sinuses.

I cannot deny that on my visit to this edifice of ecstasy, I experimented with many bouquets of elixirs and extracts, each with an amazingly yet noticeably different effect on my well being and libido.

Alas, I am not the first to have this realization.  The ability to smell has been around since Adam and Eve and the popular aromatherapy theories have been recognized since the 1920’s with the understanding that smell can affect one’s mood or health.  And, who amongst us hasn’t had a flashback when we are downwind of an odor that is reminiscent of a bygone day?

Noses, so it seems have the ability to detect between 4,000 and 10,000 smells.  As you age, smell along with notable other factions of our previous selves all lose some of its potency.  Take advantage of the plethora of camphoric, floral, pepperminty, musky, etheral, pungent and putrid smells while you can.  And to get that pesky sense of hearing on board, try a little perfume behind the ears – they will definitely derive benefit and the cooperation with smell will increase tenfold.

Cynthia A. McClelland, curious observer of the obvious with interpretations of the oddities of daily life.  Mother, wife and lover of the furry, resides in the north Lake Tahoe area.

Cynthia A. McClelland © 2003-