HANDS OF FATE

"Cradled by the hands of fate the faith that sometimes wraps around too tight - so tight" Train "Free"

A Google search of "hands quotes" returns about 20 million results, most of which refer to things we hold in our hands. We can hold our future, love, another's heart, fear, a weapon...the list is endless. But what of the hands themselves? In the lines and creases and veins live the words of each of our stories; words that cannot lie or embelish or hide the deeds that bore them. These are the words, more than the ones we speak, that speak what we are.

Like many, my hands are vital to what I do to live and for a living. Without their strenght and sensitivity, I could no more be a paramedic than I could fly without mechanical wings. But my livelihood is only the smallest fragment of what my, or your, hands know.

More of what I've learned can be attributed to putting my hands where they didn't belong rather than where they did, and that's OK because, right or wrong, they have been in some pretty amazing places, and some equally dark ones. But I am defined by these places and the marks they have left on my hands. There are scars from a childhood accident I don't remember and more recent ones I remember all too well. My fingers know of unzipping a dress and helping it to the floor; they know of zipping countless body bags and lifting them away. My hands have reached into my son's crib to lift him from his nap; and a dozen other cribs to carry away those who will not wake. My cold hands have found warmth in many places, just and unjust; and have spread their own warmth of better days to those in need. My hand has cut the cord, cut ties, shook hands over a promise and acted to break one. My fingertips hold memories my brain has pushed away, only revelaing these reminded places when they find them again, reminding me that the words are on my skin, in my veins and on every other hand that I touch.

A good friend of mine always talks about the details in everything we do. She believes, as I do, that the most important intricacies are found in the places most people don't care to look. Often these places are the hands, ours and others. Many would say that scarred and calloused hands are imperect and need to be fixed. For them, I am sorry for it these hands that fix things, and it is in these places, this character, these words, that human perfection lies.

Do good things, learn something, and be safe.