“Houston, we have contact”

A sentiment I’ve seen often is that the sensation of touch is primarily negative in it’s connotations, and to a certain extent, I agree. Sight, smell, hearing, and taste are all ways for our body to detect food or something else we might want to obtain. Touch, on the other hand, is our way of assessing bodily harm – it helps us ensure that every organ and body part is exactly where it’s supposed to be, and if it isn’t, make it loud and clear that we need to get fixed up.

Touch wasn’t always like this – in fact, touch was a key sense in the detection of food during our earliest steps in evolution. Vertebrates and invertebrates alike developed stalky antennae to feel for prey beneath the sand of primordial oceans, and to a lesser extent detect the body heat emitted by other organisms. However, as we left the water and later developed into our bipedal selves, our connection to the Earth thinned, and now we associate touch much more with pain responses than we do with the acquiring of desired stimuli.

And yet, touch is a sensation we crave to share with others. We hug friends and family who we haven’t seen, we embrace our partners at just about every chance we get, and we love petting and playing with our pets. I’m not sure if this relates to others, but I’ve found myself treating new plant life the same way – if I see a sprouting leaf, my first urge is to run my finger over it, confirm that it exists and welcome it into the world.

When we have the time and mentality to take in our sense of touch with greater detail, we often feel more connected to the world around us. Whenever I walk through the woods, I take great care to inspect interesting plants, rocks, stumps, and the arthropods that may reside within, and I always try to feel what it is I’m interested in – it’s something I can’t explain, but the connection we get from tactile affirmation transcends species or even life itself. To feel a cold stone or a patch of moss is to become a part of that system, to experience what they experience. Constance Classen details this in the chapter The aesthetics of Touch, where she describes that the long, sleepless nights of our ancestors may have lead to a deep appreciation and understanding of the natural world – physically connecting to the environment as a way to find our way around or stay out of harms way.

The ability to tap into the world around us, and the fact that we ascribe it so much value and vivid emotion, is a phenomenon I think we take for granted. Touch may be painful, but it can also connect us to others and the world around us.