If you were forced to lose all your senses and keep two, what would you choose?

It’s a morbid thought, I know, but it’s one that I have consistently thought about since I was a little child. Two senses instead of one because I can never get myself to choose between the two senses I find most precious.

I’m a visual person. I see form before I understand meaning. My career is all about visual organization. I’ve been trained since childhood to look at the world. In fact, my very existence revolves around my eyes’ ability to perceive things more acutely than the eyes of others. Thus, the sense of sight is not something I take lightly.

The other sense I equally appreciate is the sense of touch. There is something magical about touch, perhaps even more magical than sight, don’t you think?

I’ve always been exceptionally aware of sensation in my fingertips. Even when I type (and I do a lot of that), I am very conscious of every key that my nerves experience as they crash against the plastic to type words. I can feel the slightly embossed letters printed. When I used to draw, I was often more aware of the texture of the paper than the shadows of what I would be seeing. When I want to really “look” at something, I have to run my fingers over it or else my vieweing experience wouldn’t be complete.

It’s the magic of touch that makes me really love hands. Hands do all the work that the brain dictates. A person who works with his or her hands must be very aware of them. He or she must be constantly conscious of every nerve, must really know how to use them.

And there are those few amazing humans who use their hands to think with their eyes. When I look at photographs of Picasso, for example, my eyes first land on his strong, well-defined hands, and then they get lost in the brilliance of his own eyes.

Look at the tapering of his fingertips. The hard texture of his palms. The thickness of each finger. These hands painted things that changed the world. It’s amzing.

What sense would you never be able to lose?