WHAT YOUR HANDS DON’T TELL YOU
You may think you’re in charge of your hands, and they’re content to let you think that. But you were born knowing practically nothing about "hands-on" hand management, because we have a life to learn to live and must get on with immediate matters while our hands delve into the ancient archives of handiness.
The infant initiate must accrue practical hand skills slowly over the years, using the massive database of ancient handcraft. Right away giving you all they have in the handy archives is not good survival policy; you have a long series of more important lifethings to do than spend your waking time on the finer points of hand operation-- slicing onions, painting the Mona Lisa etc. The nanodetails of pinky lifting alone are formidable, with vast archives in the genetic database.
It’s better we remain in the dark on these points. Too much detail can be hazardous, as hands have learned from long experience. These distal experts don’t need you mucking things up with Oh should I this with the knife or Oh should I that with the club, so wisely they don’t tell you 99.999% or more of the background particulars; once we’re out of the way on this, we have a shot at survival. We should be thankful. Hands have been clawing forward for a long, hard time, in situations beyond our imagining, and that info is stored in a safe place within. We ourselves, on the other hand, are new here.
So there’s lots of stuff that hands keep secret. If there’s something you personally want to do, like hit a bullseye with an arrow, carve a Pieta or write cursive, hands just say “Ok, show us what you want over and over, then stay out of the way. Leave the details to us.” Hands prefer simplicity in their personal relations.
Nonetheless, we generally believe we’re in charge, since we appear to direct our hands, to bid them do our will and it is done; we seed the avocado, play some Chopin, change the tire, perform the surgery etc. -- i.e., we believe that we are ruling these dandy handy devices at the ends of our arms, to say nothing of these footy items at the ends of our legs that we we think even less about, other than that we are tacitly their masters, if we're asked.
Historically cunning creatures that they are, hands are perfectly willing to let us go on through life believing such balderdash; pride has no place in hand character, despite the truly stunning amazing breathtaking awesome things they are capable of, right down to the atom, electron, quantum level and beyond, as they well know.
Hands put miracles to shame.
