ruminatinG on reality

I watched a fascinating program on PBS about dogs and how their sense of smell far outstrips ours. It got me thinking about how we interact with what we call reality. Let’s think about it. Would we love to hang our heads out of the car window to pick up the marvelous world of scents that are so enticing to our canine companions? Probably not, unless we had ingested some form of mind altering substance

What is real to a person who is color blind is different than that of someone who has complete human color vision. What about those creatures whose color perception is wider than that of humans? Their reality is then different from that of our species, color blind or not.

The world is full of sound. There are sounds that children and teens can hear that people older than 20 can’t and the other sounds that have gradually disappeared for those of us who are of an even more mature nature. My offspring will ask us to turn off the TV in the kitchen because of the high-pitched sound it makes. The spouse and I look at each other and ask, “What high pitched sound?” Then there are the sounds that spouses are incapable of hearing when uttered by their counterpart. Things like the faucet is leaking or the garbage needs taking out.

Just what is real? I can remember,