The Importance of Touch

By Anonymous -

Touch is often thought of as one of the lower senses, but I think that's because people take it for granted. Unique in its reciprocity, we are touching everything all the time, and it touches us back. While strange to think about at first, we are really experiencing touch every second of our lives.

I found it the most interesting that we need touch to live and thrive, and without it, babies can be susceptible to developmental risks or even death. We had touched on this before in psychology classes I've taken- the importance of a nurturing mother's touch for her babies. Harry Harlow's famous experiments on baby monkeys illustrated how integral the sensation of touch was to the babies. Given either a surrogate mother made of wire or a more comfortable one made of cloth, the baby monkeys chose to spend more time with the cloth one, even when the wire one was their source of nourishment. We tend to think of animals (and even humans, sometimes) as only requiring nourishment to live, especially in the infantile stages of life. However, Harlow's experiments showed that the baby monkeys craved touch and a comforting sensation more than food.
Every time I learn about this study, it really makes me stop and think about how I would rate my senses in order of importance if I had to. I think about being stranded alone on a desert island; my main concern would be where I could find food and water, and then shelter. Of course those things are key to my survival, but thinking about what we've learned about touch, I wonder how much those things would matter if I went crazy from isolation and not being able to hug a friend if I needed to.

Maybe this importance comes from the fact that touch is the only one of the five (or six) senses that is reciprocal- we taste our food but it does not taste us back, for example. However, me typing this post involves not only my fingers touching the keyboard, but the keyboard touching my fingers. Existence is about connecting to all people and things, and touch enables us to connect to the world as well as for the world to connect to us. Helen Keller could not see or hear, but she could touch, and thus she was still able to connect on some level to her surroundings and loved ones. Losing any of the other senses would present challenges in connecting, but losing the ability to touch and feel would make it almost impossible. I'm surprised that this isn't more people's first answer when asked which sense they could not live without, if they had to choose.

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