Out here in Catalonia I break my right wrist when I lose my footing on a rock climbing away from the beach.
After 3 days in a plaster-cast I recognise three important truths:
1. We can't function without our wrists.
2. Bodymind is a miracle of divine engineering
3. Kindness is the most important virtue
Let's start with Number 2 first, because we will then be in a better position to appreciate Number 1.
The human wrist, alongside the thumb, is unique: no other species owns anything so complex.
It is constructed of two rings of small bones in the hand connected to the two long arm-bones, the radius and the ulnar. The connections are created through a labyrinth of joints. The wrist is a rotating hinge which enables the palm, fingers and thumb to clutch, wave, press, punch, catch, write, pull, stroke, gesture, pinch, grab and poke. Bodymind controls the whole, partly through the motor cortex in the brain and partly via the median nerve that runs down the arm and through the carpal tunnel into the wrist. The result is a body part that can execute an infinite number of programs stored in the brain, from pinching someone's bottom to playing a Beethoven Piano Sonata.
The most common type of break is a Distal Radius fracture, which is shown in the X-ray near the top of the longer arm bone on the right (the radius). A break like this means I have lost the hinge mechanism that commands all the ordinary functions of the hand. Right now I can't shave, eat, drive, wash, dress, throw, catch, or hold a cup, a phone or a hand-rail. I am semi-helpless.
I am dependent on my wife, my children, my friends and on anybody else who happens to be waiting around while I juggle things in my left hand like a trainee clown, or look dumbly at doors I can no longer open.
Most people are so kind. They jump to help, they carry my bag, they open doors, they smile and they talk to me. I notice, also, that when people barge into me it's not because they are unkind, it's because they don't care - they are preoccupied with their own obsessions.
It could be good for the soul to be handicapped for a little while, when it means you have no choice but to accept other peoples' compassion.








