"Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight"
About this Quote
Ackerman’s line lands like a quiet provocation: it treats touch not as a luxury or a bonus feature of intimacy, but as a biological necessity on the level of photosynthesis. That comparison to sunlight is doing more than prettifying the idea. Sunlight is ambient, nonverbal, and often unnoticed until it’s missing; it’s also an input the body and mind convert into energy, mood, and regulation. By borrowing that logic, Ackerman smuggles touch out of the realm of romance and into the realm of public health.
The intent feels characteristically Ackerman: to re-enchant the senses while keeping one foot planted in the scientific. She’s a poet of the nervous system, the kind who wants you to remember that the self is not just thoughts but skin, temperature, pressure, rhythm. “Seems to be” is an important hedge; it signals curiosity rather than doctrine, inviting the reader to test the claim against lived experience. It also implies a culture that habitually underestimates touch, needing persuasion to grant it “essential” status.
The subtext is political as much as personal. If touch is essential, then its absence isn’t merely sad; it’s deprivation. That frames loneliness, caregiving, and social isolation as conditions with tactile consequences. In context, Ackerman’s work often pushes back against a modern tendency to live at a remove: screens, distance, professionalism, fear of contact. The line restores touch as an elemental human nutrient, suggesting that deprivation isn’t just emotional; it’s physiological, with all the quiet damage that implies.
The intent feels characteristically Ackerman: to re-enchant the senses while keeping one foot planted in the scientific. She’s a poet of the nervous system, the kind who wants you to remember that the self is not just thoughts but skin, temperature, pressure, rhythm. “Seems to be” is an important hedge; it signals curiosity rather than doctrine, inviting the reader to test the claim against lived experience. It also implies a culture that habitually underestimates touch, needing persuasion to grant it “essential” status.
The subtext is political as much as personal. If touch is essential, then its absence isn’t merely sad; it’s deprivation. That frames loneliness, caregiving, and social isolation as conditions with tactile consequences. In context, Ackerman’s work often pushes back against a modern tendency to live at a remove: screens, distance, professionalism, fear of contact. The line restores touch as an elemental human nutrient, suggesting that deprivation isn’t just emotional; it’s physiological, with all the quiet damage that implies.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
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