‘Introducing Comedy In’: The Science Behind Smelling Your Underwear.

“To be inspired is to breathe. Breathing is inspiration. People, among them you, care a lot about inspiration.”

We don’t have to learn how to breathe. It’s literally the first thing we do when we leave our mothers’ wombs. As a primary function, we can trust our breathing capacity to help us navigate through life because it’s a basic human function. Smelling is a property of breath. You can trust your sense of smell to do what other senses can’t, such as detecting the dirt on your undies.

The way we interact with our environment is based on how we are built as human beings. The technicalities on which we function are founded on energy reactions. Every experience is enabled by the reactions of energy happening within the scopes of our physical human realm, the five human senses. The story of smelling your underwear to know if it’s clean is the subject matter of this piece. But what does that have to do with anything? I thought you would never ask.

Sight is important, but there are things that sight can’t do, such as spotting the dirt on your underwear.

As important as eyesight is, it is not enough. That’s why you have four other physical senses to complement your vision in the process of navigating through space. These other senses—hearing, touch, taste, and smell—also work on the basis of energy reactions. Hearing happens when sound waves, containing energy, reach your eardrums, which are optimized to break down energy waves, enabling the detection of sound waves resulting in hearing. That’s how you listen to music, conversations, and other sounds that come from your immediate environment. Energy reactions.

Hearing is clearly vital. But obviously, hearing isn’t enough. There are things you can’t hear, like the dirt on your underwear.

The senses of taste and touch work perfectly when there is direct contact with physical matter. Food has to be in your mouth for you to taste it. Energy reactions, in the form of chemical reactions, occur between your taste buds and the food you put in your mouth. That’s how you get to enjoy healthy home-cooked food and unhealthy fast foods. Taste works in a universal manner, and as such, you can have a great experience, or not, from whatever arrives in your mouth. Again, energy reactions.

But obviously, there are things you cannot taste, like the dirt on your underwear. Hell no!

With touch, the nerve senses in your skin are purposed to detect physical contact with other material objects. The sense of touch is quite compelling and has had a huge influence on the human experience. You are a materialistic being because you like to touch things and feel them. A large portion of your earthly experience is about making contact with material objects, including other human beings. There is nothing evil or petty about being materialistic. In this physical realm, sentient human beings gain immense joy from manipulating and modifying physical matter, something that is aided by your tactile capability. You are driven to touch things. You want to touch money and all the things that money can buy. You naturally like to touch your loved ones and hug them, shake their hands, hold their hands, and all that other stuff. You even like the sensation of touching yourself. The sense of touch has a kingly status within the sphere of human experience.

As kingly as the sense of touch is, it isn’t enough. There are things you cannot just touch, like the dirt on your underwear.

Enter the sense of smell. Before going any further, have you ever wondered why you can smell almost anything? You can even smell whether someone is making sense! Someone might be in the middle of talking to you and say, “Do you smell me?” which is a way to ask if you understand where they are coming from. Smell. The smell of food complements the taste of food. The new car smell complements the tactile driving experience. You cannot drive a car without touching the steering wheel, of which the navigation is aided by your visual capacity. But back to smelling. The sense of smell is a smooth operator. It does things that other senses only wish they could.

The primary ability to breathe is reliable, and so is the sense of smell that comes along with it. Do you smell me?

Article By Suzy Nyongesa.