Last night, just as we had nestled into bed, and I was beginning to disappear into my nightly ritual of reading and getting dosey, my beloved wife suddenly interrupted the tranquillity with “Oh my God! What’s that smell?” Well I knew it wasn’t me so I was quite happy to carry on reading. “It smells like rancid pond weed!” Having been married for over 20 years, I knew this wasn’t going to go away so I got up and leant her my nose …sniff, sniff “I can’t smell anything” and I headed back to my side of the bed hoping to regain my quietude. “I can smell it again!” Out I get, and this time I raise the edge of the water mattress and am knocked out by a smell like a fetid swamp. We appear to have developed a small leak.

I won’t entertain (or bore) you with the rest of the story but my point is this: when we don’t have any personal evidence or experience of a phenomenon is very easy to dismiss it. Just think about those appalling disasters going on in Burma and China right now, but in reality it hardly makes a dent on our awareness. We carry on with our routines. If that was happening near us we might even jump in a car and go and help. The fact is, direct experience just transforms us and our ability to empathise. If the smell ain’t going up our nose it is easy to ignore it!

So if someone close to you is telling you about a problem, just before you get all superior and philosophical about it, or dismiss it, try taking a moment to assume that is happening just as they report, and imagine it were happening to you… Now… What would you do? How might you respond? Remember, just ‘cos you can’t smell it, don’t meant in don’t stink!

“I do smell all horse-piss; at which my nose is in great indignation” Shakespeare

“One’s own shit doesn’t smell” Old Russian saying