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Jon Slavin
Ms. Gardner
English Honors
January 25, 2014

Manibus

What are body parts to us but things that we can use? We can discern depth from our eyes, or
contemplate on sounds we caught in our ears. But body parts are what we use to filter the outside world
for our brains. Sensory detail. We sense so many things, that we require a multitude of systems in order to
process it all. Hands are our number one sensory-based body part. We use our hands to feel the world, the
textures, all the things we make, we make with our hands. We MAKE things with our hands. Things that
are the sole creations of our brains.
The things that matter most to people these days are material. We like to be able to hold things
and say, I have had that for 22 years or I made that out of clay. Its a sort of infection that human
beings have as the consumers we are. We like certain textures. We want things to be smooth, soft, ridged,
rounded, heavy, or light. This defines what humans have and always will desire to hold in our hands I,
myself, am guilty of this as well. As an avid collector of various items to put on my desk, I enjoy being
able to sit in my boredom and hold a Rubiks Cube, a small thumbdrive that has and probably remain
empty, or an old Kodak camera from the 50s. It just gives me something to do with my hands when Im
empty minded or reading. It gives me something to do with my hands.
Sometimes I sit and think about all I could be doing with my free time on weekends. Most of the
time, the answer I come up with is Make something. I cant help but realize that what I have is a good,
working pair of hands. With my hands, I can type or write a short story or some poems. I can pick up
some pens and draw a picture. Or I could make music, which is what I most desire to do as of late. I cant
help but think how this thought process has affected humans over time with the inventions of items we

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take for granted today. Every invention has to have started with someone thinking something like, You
know, Ive got these hands that I can make things with, and Im awfully tired of carrying things on my
back so I think Ill try to make something round in order to make a rolling cart of some sort. Humans
have a drive to make things so that we can take ownership of them and show them off or just revel in our
own creations.
Throughout history, hands have been crucial to the formation of major cities and roads. In the
Indian mythology, gods and goddesses have multiple hands to signify their power over many things at a
time. Civilizations built themselves up with the use of their hands. The Romans called hands manibus.
This Latin word can also be used for a workforce, or a construction team, That shows you where the
Romans priorities were with their hands. They wanted to build things, great cities, roads that stretched
for miles. This priority is still true of todays people. Think about it. Doesnt it seem like every year, there
is some new creation to buy or view? The only difference is that we have lost the will to make things with
our own hands, in favor of using robots. We are breeding more lazy people as well, as less and less
requires much movement to achieve. It is a miracle that we still write physically with pencils and pens,
while computers exist. However, everything gets traced back to the use of hands.
When I look at my hands, I see the microscopic ridges in the skin, and I notice how if a hand was
a huge geographical structure, the knuckles and prominent veins would be the fells and hills of the region.
Hands are so anatomically versatile, and so complex in structure. For one to discover anything about
hands, they must look closely at their own and discover what they mean to them. We take our hands for
granted, as well. You dont see dogs picking up glasses with their paws. In fact, most animals other than
primates have little to no manual dexterity in the first place. We have hands to thank for our success as a
species. I am a firm believer that our opposable thumbs are one of the main reasons we didnt go extinct
right away. Human beings got lucky in the hands department. Since it would be unfair to say that all the
hand does is do though, I should also mention that it has been very good at taking over the years as well.
And when I say the years, I mean all of human history.

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To sum it up, I feel that hands are great for most things. Picking things up, throwing things, and
giving and taking all work wonderfully with them. But I think more people need to realize how wonderful
hands are. I would very much like to see a world where more things are hand-made and praised because
of it. In the words of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, The hand is the visible part of the brain.
Perhaps this strikes a chord with many people, or maybe its just me. But it seems like hands are the truly
what we use to bring the outside world in, or to push our inside world out.