Contact

Ever stop to think about all the things you touch during the course of one day? We use our hands for so many things: lifting, holding, grabbing, comforting, sensing texture, writing, typing, washing, using a fork or chopsticks, and so on. I can also use my hands for playing the piano, for conducting, and today for scanning groceries at rapid speed, bagging them like puzzle pieces, typing in produce codes, and handling more money than most people will see in a month (unless they have a good paycheck, entirely in cash). Hands do a lot of work for us; they are the part of a person’s body that connects with the world most often, communicating with gestures, relaying information about the environment, and coming in contact with other people.
Touch can hurt or heal, and of course be significant or insignificant. When I am working at the store, I end up brushing hands with people a lot when I take cards or money, give receipts, and pass them bags. That sort of insignificant touch is somewhere between “eww” (germs), and “sorry” (I didn’t mean to invade your personal space) and “whatever” (it’s nothing). Healing touch, on the other hand, is a remedy for isolation as well as being good for the physical being. For me, healing touches are things like petting the cat (or dog, if I get the chance), wearing comfy slippers after painful work shoes, hugging friends, a visit with the massage therapist (painful, but good pain), sitting on good furniture after a day of impersonal and uncomfortable break room/desk chairs, a pat on the back from a coach that means “good job,” and of course any sort of touch that is built on a connection of love and trust. What kind of contact could we have, if we didn’t have hands? How many marvels would have gone unmade, and scientific advances undiscovered? What lonely, limited creatures we would be, if we didn’t have touch.