Why, even though the body sleeps, is the nose always awake?

They say that one day Orí, the head, went to the I guess Orula so that he would help her to have a body and he followed his advice, and while the sixteen days that the sage asked him to wait, his trunk and limbs were enlarged.

At the end of the period indicated by Orula, the body was already complete with the trunk, the Apa or the arms and the Elese melli or the legs.

Since then, head, trunk and limbs have been together, thanks to the fact that the head followed Orunmila's advice.

Countless stories relate the importance of heeding Orula's word, which is fair, true, and never falls to the ground, whoever follows his advice will always be saved.

The Yoruba story of Orí, the nose and the body

But the nose, the eyes, the limbs, the trunk and the ears, did not stay still and wanted to know their function in the human organism.

So they went to register with Orula the wise soothsayer and benefactor of humanity and he told them that they had to pray because there might come a time when they would be so tired that they would go to sleep and could not function properly.

But when they left the place of Orula they separated and each one took their way without believing the wise Orisha.

The eyes accustomed to seeing everything did not believe that at some point they could get tired and close, while the extremities, ideal for walking the roads and grabbing objects, laughed at the idea of fatigue.

Nor did the trunk think that it was in any other position than upright, and the ears that listened to everything, carefree, forgot the prayer.

Nose he listened to Orula

The nose was the only one that followed the advice of the soothsayer Orisha fearing it would stop breathing at some point.

Some time later, the eyes felt tiredness close them and the exhausted limbs needed to rest before the idea of overcoming many obstacles.

The trunk also looked for a place to lie down at night to overcome fatigue and the ears fell deeply asleep with the others, without hearing anything for a while.

But in the midst of that silence, only the nose remained awake and it is the organ that never rests. Since then, when the body sleeps, the nose watches.