Thankful For All Five

My right eye has been tender for the last day or two. There's a slight bit of very mild pain when I blink my eye, and a slightly stronger pain if I push on the eyeball. Nothing really bothersome of worry-worthy, I don't think, but I did briefly entertain the notion that there might be something seriously wrong that, left untreated, could cause blindness in my right eye.

I doubt it, but it got my thinking down a path I've traveled many times before. About how I'm so thankful to have all five of my senses. I couldn't imagine living without any one of them. I have a strong respect for any person missing a sense that still manages to live a successful life (I know that's generally all of them, but I don't respect them because they're unique, but because of the difficulty involved.) I especially respect those persons that had a particular sense and then lost it. It's far worse, I'd imagine, to know music, to know the sound of someone's voice, or the beauty of an autumn day, and then be denied the ability to ever experience them again.

Would I function if I ever lost my sight, my hearing, or calamity of calamities, my sense of taste? Of course. I'd have no choice. And who knows? Maybe the amplification of the remaining senses that seems to accompany the loss of any one would make up for what's missing. I already know what it's like to listen to music with my eyes closed, or stare out at a distant valley from a silent mountaintop. The absence of one makes the others more insistent, more pertinent, and even more highly appreciated. Music, without visual distraction, takes on an internal visual component. It seems to exist more definitively in space. And vision without sound has a purity it's not normally granted.

So if I'm ever faced with the loss of a sense, I think I'll do fine. I'll adapt. But I am grateful to random chance and kismet that, as of yet, that isn't a scenario I have to face.