Sometime towards the end of 2022, I picked up Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense by Richard Kearney after going to a bookstore on a rainy day. I wanted to get out of the house but didn’t want to do anything that took too much effort. Those are usually the best days to browse books!
This was a pretty quick read and I’ll admit my eyes glazed over a lot of it (there were many words I don’t know, too many to look up and understand in context), but I like the brief study on our sense of touch from different views: in context of the other senses, what philosophers have said, touch in the digital world, healing touch, etc. What I’ve learned is that touch is essential to our understanding of self, and it’s more than simply a description of texture.
– You can’t touch someone without them touching (feeling) you, too.
– Touch (or sometimes the lack of it) is the foundation of pleasure.
– Touch is an intimate sense (like taste). You must be close, unlike sight, smell, and hearing, which you can experience at a distance.
– Stillness removes sensibility until you move again. (Think of meditation and that floating feeling when you can’t feel where your hands end and the body they rest on begin.)
– Touch is proof we exist, especially when considering ghost stories.
Most of us, probably, have been keenly aware of touch (or the lack of it) since 2020. Before reading this book, I began to embrace touch like it could cure anything. I give bigger, tighter hugs and I don’t shy away as much when people use touch to show platonic affection. It has created a wonderful renewal of connection with the people I’m hugging.
All of our relationships with touch are individual, but my personal journey has been a strange one. I’m in a weird spot where I am afraid to be touched because I don’t feel like I can trust it. Touch makes me feel safe and stable even if it’s coming from someone who is not safe for me or interested in stability. I’m picky about it in a way I haven’t experienced in my life before. It is in many ways impacting how I see reality. I am less clouded by the fictions that form with tactile comfort.