Dear LPG,

I have found a bit of information which has totally discredited one of the basic principles that I learned years ago.

When I was but a young thing, we were all taught that there were five senses and that we need to take care of them if we want to give their potential to last us for our whole lives the best possible opportunity. 

Recently, I decided to use one of my morning googling sessions to do a little research into which is the most important sense and, as ever, found some interesting reading.  It appears that, according to internet writers the sense of sight is the one to be marked in this way, but I think that all the senses are equally important to us and that they should be counted among the many things that we should not learn to take for granted during the time that we have on this earth.

I found a website which has determined that we really have 33 senses and breaks the five that we are usually aware of down even more, although I have to conclude that they are all equally as important as each other, even though we know so many who live fulfilling lives while living without one or two of them.

Helen Keller was only 19 months old when she lost her sense of hearing and sight, but she went on to write many books on some interesting subjects while Stevie Wonder, and Ray Charles used sound to produce some wonderful music having never been able to see anything.    I have seen my aunt find blindness added to her list of retirement adjustments and even though she only had 6 weeks’ notice of what was to come when it happened some ten years ago, she has adjusted and learned to adapt.  

I am still guilty of moving too fast for her from time to time when we are negotiating the streets together, when I am offering hand gestures with a conversation shared with her which are vital to the sense of what I am saying, and it is so easy to ask her if she has seen the latest episode of a soap opera when I phone.  

When she gets a little down I always try to remind her of what I think is the most important aspect of life and that is to feel that you have succeeded at something that is important to you before you pop off, and I think that those things can be achieved with or without all your senses.

YG, Bellingham

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