Have you ever truly thought about what it’s like to be born without even one sense?
Not just losing it later in life, but never having it at all.
I’m not just talking about an inability to see or hear. What I’m talking about is never knowing what vision or sound actually is.
Let’s explore that for a moment.
Try to imagine the world of someone who was born blind. Someone who doesn’t even know what “seeing” means.
He might wonder how something like “colour” can exist when it cannot be heard, smelled, touched, or tasted.
It is tough to imagine how strange their world might be.
Just Turn Off the Lights……
You can say:- “What’s tough? I know what ‘seeing’ is, so I can surely tell you what ‘ notseeing’ would be. I just need to close my eyes or turn off the lights for it.”
But when you close your eyes or turn off the lights, you see the dark. You’re not “seeing Nothing.”
There’s a simple little trick to get a sense of what a completely blind person actually sees.
Just try this.
Cover one eye with your hand. Now, try to see from that same eye. What do you see?
Nothing, right? That’s what no sight feels like.
But here’s the thing, you’re still not even close to what it’s like to be born blind. You’re seeing nothing, but you are still seeing.
A person born blind doesn’t even know what this whole “seeing” thing actually is.
No black, no darkness, no nothing, just… no idea of vision at all.
And that’s what makes the whole difference. That’s the thing that makes their whole world totally different from ours.
Of Course, He Can Think of a Car.
To get a better feel for this, let’s try something simple.
Close your eyes and imagine a red car. Go on, really picture it.
Now here’s a question:
“Do you think someone born blind would imagine it the same way?”
You may say, “Well, maybe not the colour, but he can touch a car, feel its shape, and build a kind of image in their mind, even if it’s a colourless one.”
But hold on…
How can someone build an image in his mind if he doesn’t even know what an image actually is?
Leave the real world. A born blind person can’t even have the luxury of seeing anything in his imagination.
Have you ever craved for anything that you couldn’t even have in your imagination?
Let’s give this world a new sense!
Well, no matter how hard we try, stepping into the shoes of a born blind person seems impossible.
And honestly, it’s not just about sight. It’s the same with any sense, we just can’t imagine not having something we’ve always had.
After all, how can we unknow something that we already know?
No worries. There is a hack.
What if, instead of taking a sense away… we tried adding one?
Like, imagine there’s a sense you’ve never had. But somehow, everyone else around you does.
Surprisingly, adding an extra sense to the whole world is easier to imagine than taking an existing one away from ourselves.
Now, sure, this won’t show us exactly what it’s like to live with an existing disability like Blindness. But it can give us something just as important, a glimpse into what disability itself actually means.
And maybe… that’s where the understanding begins.
Old is Not Gold
Now, even though this might sound easy… coming up with a completely new sense is actually really hard.
We can’t cheat. We can’t use anything from the existing senses.
Like, I can’t just say “a sense to see emotions.”
Because, well… we already kind of do that. And we know what seeing and emotions mean. That’s just upgrading something we already have. It’s not new, it’s just a remix.
Since we can’t borrow anything from our existing senses, we’ll have to make our own little dictionary.
Yep — we’re about to invent some new words. Words you’ve never heard before. Words that don’t mean anything in real life.
So you’ll need to stay sharp, or you might get lost in the weirdness of the words themselves.
Alright then, let’s try creating a brand-new sense from scratch.
Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
The Sixth Sense
Even though we can’t carry anything over from our existing senses, we can borrow one of them as a kind of analogy.
Just to get things rolling.
I’m going to use smell as an example only, not because the new sense will be anything like it, but because it might help us imagine what something totally new could feel like.
Let’s call this sixth sense “Etho.” (made-up name)
What is Etho
Like smell, which is a process to detect different “Odours,” etho is a process to detect different “Blorfs.”(made-up name)
So….. What is Blorf
Like Odour, Blorf is in everything. Every animal, food, object, and substance has its own unique Blorf.
No two Blorfs are the same. And just by sensing a Blorf, people instantly know what the thing is. It’s that distinct.
How Does a Blorf Reach Us?
Smell needs air molecules. Hearing needs sound waves. Sight needs light.
What about Blorfs?
They travel through Blorf waves, a completely different kind of energy. Every object naturally emits these waves.
How do people detect Blorfs?
Just like we smell through our nose, people etho through their cheeks.
Yeah — cheeks.
Their cheeks have special sensory tissues that pick up Blorf waves. Once the cheeks catch those waves, they send signals to a part of the brain specifically designed for this purpose. The brain decodes the wave and instantly knows the object by its unique Blorf.
So, no need to see it, touch it, or hear it. If you can Etho it, you know it.
A New Normal
Alright, now that we’ve got a sense of how Etho works, let’s imagine a world where almost everyone can do it.
A sixth sense, so normal, people barely think about it. They just do it.
In this world, everyone can Etho the Blorf of things.
And Blorfs? They’re everywhere. They shape how people feel, what they choose, and who they’re drawn to.
Blourfull Nature
Nature is full of Blorfs. Every tree, every river, every mountain gives off its own unique Blorf.
Like standing near a waterfall might flood anyone with excitement, while sitting under a Blorf-rich tree might just melt the anxiety away.
Preference for different blorfs
Everyone has their own preferences in Blorfs. Some Blorfs just feel right, and evolution has a hand in that.
The Blorfs’ people are drawn to? They usually come from things that helped the ancestors survive.
So yeah… turns out, natural selection didn’t stop at looks or smell.
It shaped the Blorf preferences too.
I’ve got a good blorf.
People have their own blorf as well. In fact, in this world, having a “good” Blorf is a big deal. Even more than looking good or smelling nice.
People who give off a pleasing Blorf are admired, sought after. Hence, people are very conscious of their own blorf.
People here go to great lengths to boost or fake their Blorf. They use multiple tricks to deceive others about their blorfs, similar to perfume or cosmetic surgery.
Market and manipulation
And of course… how can we forget the markets?
Companies now flood products with artificial Blorfs to mimic the good stuff.
That drink you love? It’s not the real Blorf of nature; it’s a lab-made knockoff designed to feel real.
It works. People buy it. But the original feeling? It’s gone.
Blourficians
And then, there are the artists.
The Blourficians. People who craft beautiful Blorf waves that can move you to tears.
Some make you feel joy. Some bring nostalgia. Some hit you so deep you don’t even have words for it.
And yes, some Blorf waves have become legendary. Passed down, celebrated, remembered.
You can think about other aspects of this world too. How would this sixth sense shape their preferences for celebrities?
How would it influence their culture, shape their religions (obviously, gods would have the most divine Blorfs), or affect the way they build and use technology?
It touches everything.
Nothing Makes Sense
You might be thinking:-
None of this makes any sense
This whole Etho and Blorf thing is clearly made up.
Sure, you’ve told us how people receive signals through their cheeks, how they prefer certain Blorfs, how society runs around it… But still, what is Etho, really?
You have not explained what Ethoing actually feels like. Is it more like a sound? A smell? A flash of colour? A vibration?
Even after all this explanation… I still don’t get it.”
Bad news
Everything you just said makes perfect sense. And still… no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to tell you what Etho feels like.
You know why?
Because you’re an AETHO by birth. You’ve never Etho’d a thing in your life. I honestly feel sorry for you.
“Wait, what now? AETHO? Another made-up term?”
Yeah. AETHO — a person who can’t Etho.
Someone born without the ability to feel Blorfs. Someone who doesn’t even know what they’re missing.
Living Life as an Aetho
I get your frustration. You’ve been hearing about this whole Etho thing for the first time, and it sounds strange, unfamiliar, maybe even made-up.
But now, imagine being born into this world as an Aetho, someone who’s never been able to Etho at all.
What would it feel like if everyone around you could Etho as easily as we smell, or hear?
A handicap
Let’s be honest, you’d be considered handicapped. There would be support programs, maybe even special rights. You’d have your own category in competitions and sports.
And of course, by now you would’ve seen multiple cheekologists, those medical specialists who deal with all things cheek-related. You’d get your cheeks scanned, tested, diagnosed…
But in the end, they’d all tell you the same thing: You just don’t have the sensors. The ones that let people detect Blorfs? You were born without them.
Communicating the Unknown
There’d probably be some kind of sign language to help translate Blorfs into signals your other five senses could understand. But of course, it would be much slower than how people actually Etho.
And the strange part?
You’d be communicating a Blorf to someone else… without having any idea what that Blorf actually feels like.
Your inner world
You’d use words like Etho and Blorf every day, but deep down, they’d just be… words. Empty, abstract. Like placeholders for something that never arrives.
Even though you’d see people around you Ethoing all the time, there’d still be moments where you wonder,
Is this all just a big prank? Are they really sensing something like Blorf? Or are they just pretending?
But that sense of wonder… it would quickly turn into sadness. Especially when you see people creating art with it, expressing love through it, building entire lives around this thing you can’t even feel.
You might start to feel like a human trapped in an alien society. Or maybe the other way around, like everyone else is part of something you were never invited into.
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never truly understand what people feel when they Etho a Blorf.
And the hardest part? You’d still be you. Same mind, same heart.
But just watching others experience something you can’t… that’s what makes you feel handicapped.
And maybe, on some days , you’d even look up and ask,
Why me? Why did you make me like this?
So, tell us, what does a Blorf Feel Like?
People being people… they just can’t digest the idea that someone might truly not know what Ethoing is.
So they ask. And they ask often.
- How do you decide what to wear if you can’t Etho the Blorf of your clothes?
- Do you Etho in your dreams?
- How do you choose your friends if you can’t sense their Blorfs?
- What kind of Blorf do you fantasise about?
- Can you even enjoy nature without feeling the Blorfs of trees and flowers?
As an Aetho, who you actually are in real life as well, it’s easy to see how absurd those questions really are, right?
Two different worlds
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never truly understand this new world.
You can read everything about it, study its science, learn the sign language, but Etho will still feel like some kind of magic. A power everyone around you has… except you.
And just like that, they’ll never understand your world either.
They’ll try, maybe.
But deep down, they’ll always assume that somewhere, in some quiet corner of your mind… you must know what Etho feels like.
But you don’t.
And to them, imagining a world built on only five senses, one without Etho, would feel just as impossible as Etho feels to you.
Can We Understand Them Now?
If this imagined world with Etho felt strange to you, just think about what a world filled with light might feel like to someone born blind.
Seeing is 100 times more complicated than any sixth sense we can imagine with our tiny brains.
What kind of magical powers must we seem to have in the imagination of a blind person?
No matter how hard we try, we won’t ever truly step into their shoes.
But maybe, after spending a little time as an Aetho, we’re now better prepared to listen.
So let’s listen.
Here’s Tommy Edison, who has been blind since birth, sharing his world with us. Maybe now, we’ll hear him differently.