Our Senses Are Starved for… Everything

“For everyone, a great struggle in lockdown has been sensory deprivation. A life normally rich in texture and color is smoothed out into monotone sackcloth.”

Every line of Tobias Stone’s beautiful essay in GEN on our collective sensory deprivation during the pandemic tore me open, making me realize I was missing things I didn’t know I had lost. Yes, human interaction and touch, but also the sounds of a bustling city “that formed the backdrop of our days and nights,” and smells wafting from restaurants and strangers and even cars we pass on the street. “The air is…