I’ve got a friend who lost the end of his finger a while back. They found it, and thanks to the wonders of modern medicine were able to reattach the tip to the finger – minus just a touch more than the width of a saw blade…
Talking with him a couple weeks ago, he was describing how frustrating it was growing accustomed to the new finger, now that it was healed and becoming “usableâ€. Seems that the nerve connections didn’t come back together well, so that fingertip has very little sensation. My friend says that he never realized just how much he depended on sensitive fingertips to get the most mundane tasks done in the day, not to mention the more demanding tasks. To add insult to injury, he’s noticed that it’s not only the inability to sense touch to do fine work that’s a problem, but also the inability to feel pain. He was doing some work in the driveway the other day, and when he got into the house, he noticed that he had banged the end of his finger up badly, and wasn’t even aware that he’d done it.
Seems funny, doesn’t it, that we miss the ability to feel pain? Our fingertips need sensitive touch in order to operate as effective tools, and they need a highly developed sense of pain in order to keep them safe – safety does not equal lack of pain.
I suppose if I didn’t want to use my hands as effectively as possible – just keep them in my pockets all the time – these things wouldn’t be so important. Wouldn’t really matter if they were able to work as highly developed tools, and wouldn’t really matter if they felt pain – I’d just keep ‘em safe by keeping ‘em out of harm’s way all the time. But then, I would have chosen to cripple myself by taking my hands out of play.
Listening to him, it struck me that the exact same principles and notions that apply to our ability to develop and leverage our physical assets, (like our amazing hands and fingers), apply to our ability to develop and leverage our social and emotional assets as well.
Negotiating the emotional perils of treachery, betrayal, and the other bumps and bruises that are part of the human social landscape, we’re sure to feel a good deal of pain now and then. But it’s all just part of developing that important social sensitivity that allows us to interact closely with those around us. We could keep our social and emotional hands in our pockets, so to speak, and avoid any risk of pain, though doing so would keep us from developing tender sensitivity that brings us together with others in this life – it would cripple us socially.
Last evening I got home from a fishing trip, and my Brittany Spaniel was delighted to see me. She laid down next to me, and was in heaven as I softly caressed the back of her head and all around her ears, occasionally letting my fingers lightly work their way through the soft curls on top of her shoulders. I thought of my friend, and was thankful to have the sensitive fingertips that allowed me to create the wonderful interface between myself and my dog. Her half-closed eyes made me think she was thankful too…
To some extent, we get to choose how much we’re willing to feel in life, but we don’t get to choose to feel only the stuff that “feels goodâ€. Greater sensitivity allows us to build stronger and more effective tools for sure, but we’ve got to be willing to slog through the painful stuff in the process. The painful stuff reminds us of the strength of the tools we’re building, and as my friend discovered, the pain is often an pretty darned effective way of preventing us from doing real harm to ourselves…
Where in my life, I wonder, have I chosen to keep my social and emotional hands in my pockets – keeping ‘em safe – and subsequently missing wonderful opportunities to feel wonder and peace? I’m sure there are places where I’ve avoided pain by avoiding risk, but at what cost? How many soft floppy ears have gone unscratched?
