I am not sure about you, but I know this happens to me. I walk into a room. It is a room that I often walk into. Nothing has been changed about the room, it is exactly the same. Then a stranger walks into a room. They have never been there before. And right away they notice something in the room. Either something so beautiful or so shocking that it really is the only thing that they notice. And you are left to wonder how did I miss that? It is so obvious, how could I not see that.
The same holds true with odors. One television commercial reminds us that we get "nose blind" to a room. We get so used to the ambient smell of a room, that we don't notice it anymore. Or we become blind to the smell of our deodorant or cologne or perfume. A stranger comes into the mix and that is the first thing that they smell. We have become so used to it, we don't notice it, but someone comes into the room for the first time and that is all they smell.
Every moment of every day, we are presented with thousands if not millions of stimulae. There are just too many shapes and colours to take in at every moment. There are so many sounds that surround us. Our nose is inundated with countless smells. Thousands of taste receptors are activated with every morsel of food we eat or with every drink. And there are a variety of smooth and rough surfaces just waiting to be touched with my finger tips. For those of us blessed with all five senses we are constantly barraged with so much input that if we saw,felt, heard, smelt, and taste, we would be overwhelmed. Thus we become immune to much of this constant input. Someone who is brand new to a situation will also filter out most of this input. But they might notice something that we had filtered out- something of beauty or something that might shock. That is why it is important for us to get input from those that are new or first timers. They might sense something that we take for granted. Blessings.
