[In-person] Curiosity Café – Touch

It is widely accepted that babies need to be held during early infancy. It reduces stress, supports regulation, and encourages social bonding and healthy development. But what happens when those babies become adults? Is there a point when a person no longer needs to be held? In other words: do we ever grow out of our need for touch?

In this cafe, we will reflect on our experiences of touch* and its implications. As one of the primary ways we engage with our surroundings, touch comprises a vast spectrum of sensations and emotions. It can be pleasurable or painful. It can bring us into our bodies or take us out of them. We enjoy the touch of certain materials against our skin and despise the feeling of others. But while touch plays a meaningful role in our relationships to each other and the world, its value and utility are often debated. To some, touch is a biological necessity; to others, it is merely nice to have. Touch seems reserved for only certain kinds of relationships and not others. What's more, societal norms and expectations greatly shape our relationship to touch, sometimes in ways that come into tension with our own boundaries. By examining touch and its role in our lives, we hope to better understand this universal experience and how it can, hopefully, bring us closer together.

Join co-moderators Abby Richards and B and B alumni Heidi MarieKnechtel to explore the following questions and more: :

• Do you consider yourself a touchy person?
• Are there certain objects — fabrics, clothing, food — that you hate touching?
• What kinds of relationships is touch more or less important in, for you?
• What is society’s attitude toward touch and how has it shifted over time?
• Is touch an actual, biological need?

*NOTE: Experiences with touch vary massively and could, for some, make conversation on the subject feel particularly difficult. At this cafe, you are welcome to share whatever experiences feel safe for you to share and set aside those that don’t. We welcome reflections that highlight the particular ways experiences of touch can vary from person to person.

Space is limited! Please obtain a “Pay-What-You-Can” ticket from Curiosity Café at this link (click here) to attend this event. You need a ticket to be admitted. See the above link for more info about tickets and other options including a limited number of free tickets. Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30pm. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle.

Hope to see you there!

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This event is brought to you by Being and Becoming, a Toronto based non-profit. We aim to create community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we can come to a richer understanding of the world around us.

By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.

Find out more about Being and Becoming here.

About the Curiosity Café Series:

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.