A hand is “a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm.”
Biologically true, yes, but lacking the poetry that offers bigger and broader dimensions of a thing. Hands are also connected to the heart. Each day we have a choice to live with hands open and upward, giving and receiving with gratefulness and generosity, or to move about with fists clenched, clutching, knuckles pulsing. What we choose for our prehensile appendages on any given day must certainly be connected to the state of our hearts.
Grasping Hands
Before we ever choose to grasp, we do so instinctively and reflexively. The palmar grasp reflex is well known to any parent who has fallen in love with a newborn. Simply place a finger on a newborn’s palm, and the infant automatically wraps their tiny ones around yours.
When put in terms of prehensile appendages, it sounds like this:
The response of the reflex comprises flexion of all fingers around the examiner’s finger, which is composed of two phases: finger closure and clinging. The latter occurs as a reaction to the proprioceptive stimulation of the tendons of the finger muscles due to slight traction subsequent to the application of pressure to the palm.
When described in the language of the heart, the grasp reflex feels like a symphony of love, tiny child clinging to warm connection, hearts melting in deep affection, bonds being formed for a lifetime.
The grasp reflex slowly disappears over the first year of life as the child gains voluntary control over when to grasp and when to let go. Yet even for adults, it seems, this requires a lifespan to learn. So often we grasp after things that need to be released, and we sometimes fail to hold firm to what matters most.
Thursday and Friday
On the fourth Thursday of every November, most of us living in the United States celebrate a day of Thanksgiving. Our grateful hearts beckon our hands to mash potatoes, slice apples for pie, unfold napkins, and pass the gravy. These same hearts and hands may embrace family and friends and perhaps join together in prayer as we lift up our soulish bodies to God in gratitude and contentment.
For many, Thursday brings holy grasping--like that early palmar reflex--as we yearn for connection with one another, for harmony despite our differences, for love that triumphs over all the tensions that may swirl in our homes and cities and throughout the whole world.
After Thursday, Friday comes. Without much noticing, our grasping reflex may change.
At 5:00 a.m. on Black Friday in 2008, Jdimytai Damour—a thirty-four-year-old Haitian immigrant—was trampled to death by a Walmart crowd in Long Island, New York. One of the main incentives impelling the throng was a deal on a 42-inch television for $598. The same size television sells today for less than half that price. On that same fateful day in 2008, two women started arguing in a Toys “R” Us in Palm Desert, California, and the men with them drew weapons and killed each other. Three years later a woman used pepper spray in her quest for a deeply discounted video game, or perhaps to defend her teenage children after other shoppers wanted the same game. In 2012, two people were shot outside a Tallahassee Walmart after a heated dispute regarding a parking spot. Another shooting and death occurred in 2016 over a parking spot at a Reno Walmart. The list goes on and on. There’s even a macabre website that keeps track of Black Friday deaths and injuries.
Admittedly, these are extreme examples, but notice the vivid contrast. The same hands that join around the table on Thursday are capable of greedy grasping on Friday. Our hearts, like our hands, are complex and multifaceted, inclined toward both the holy and the greedy.
Opting Out
In 2015, REI created a bold, countercultural alternative to Black Friday by launching #OptOutside. Giving up one of their largest sales days of the year, the company decided to pay their fifteen thousand employees to spend the day outdoors with friends and family. #OptOutside has become a visible alternative to the competitive clamor of Black Friday. Hundreds of other companies have joined the effort, especially those selling outdoor recreational equipment.
These companies are likely reaping business benefits for their countercultural idea, and they are also promoting social, environmental, and physical well-being. A 2020 study found connections between time outdoors and reduced materialism. People living in states with more wilderness and national forests buy fewer big diamonds and spend less in general on luxury brands. Being in nature evokes a sense of awe, where we feel we are part of something bigger than ourselves, and when we experience awe, we also show gains in compassion, generosity, and caring for others. Our sense of self gets smaller (in a good way) as we become less entitled and feel connected to something vast and powerful.
A Choice and a Metaphor
The day after Thanksgiving, we all face a choice. Do we enter the marketplace with its acquisitive grasping for parking spaces and discounted merchandise, or do we opt outside, where we see God’s handiwork and locate ourselves in the mosaic of a vast and beautiful creation?
Of course, opting out is bigger than one November day each year. It's also a metaphor.
Each of us confront liminal moments in life where we make choices to move upwardly, laterally, or downwardly. These important decisions carry implications for our career, economic stability, family life, health, and spiritual vitality. We often have more choice than we may presume. The pressured messages all around us tell us to keep ascending, grasping for the next rung on the proverbial ladder, tirelessly moving upward. Sometimes this is good, calling us to challenge ourselves, exercise our gifts, or provide for our needs. And sometimes we are climbing just to climb without assessing the cost to ourselves and to others impacted by our choices.
I worked too hard climbing in my early and middle adulthood, and it came at a cost to me, to Lisa, and to others. There are no rewind buttons in life, so I can’t go back and change those choices now, but I can admire and encourage those on a wiser path.
Have a good Thanksgiving week, friends. And maybe go for a walk on Friday.
This post is adapted from a chapter in An Invitation to Slow titled "Slow to Grasp: An Invitation to Contentment." As such, some of these words were crafted and refined by my co-author in life, Lisa Graham McMinn.
Comments