Man Hands
I once shook hands with someone and they commented on how callused and rough my hands were, “like a man”. And I giggled to myself remembering a Seinfeld episode where Jerry comments on his girlfriend’s, “man hands”, with disgust. I think to myself, “what’s wrong with ‘man hands’?”, “if it means they’re strong and have worked hard, then he’s right”, I thought.
I thought about all of the work I had put into building up calluses on my hands when I was a gymnast. Hardening and thickening the skin to protect them from friction when doing parallel bar routines and tumbling on the balance beam. You don’t want soft hands in gymnastics. They make you too vulnerable to injury and, they can interfere with your routines. If you can’t handle the pain and ripping of skin mid-way through a routine, your whole routine is a bust, and it shows. They are a ‘must have’ for gymnasts but you have to make sure they don’t thicken too much.
It was the same with running; the calluses on my feet from spikes and runners. And, with my boots after I joined the military. Daughter number two has permanent calluses on her feet from years of competing as a distance runner and, doing charity runs and marathons. She scoffs at her feet every time she wears sandals, and I remind her why they are there. They are a reminder of when running tried to break her and failed. That she worked hard for them. You needed calluses on your feet in the military, as well. I worked hard for the ones on my feet, as did daughter number one.
Daughter number one taught me that I needed these calluses, and why. I remember when she and I went to get a pedicure once and she instructed the girl doing her pedicure not to remove her calluses, because she was in training with the military still and needed her calluses to do the long, 13+ km ruck sack marches. Without them, your feet are shredded and bleeding after the first 2-3 kms and you have trouble walking for days after – or until they turn into more calluses. I thought about all of these calluses – their role in our lives, and about my ‘man hands’ – and how they are necessary to help us be more resilient. How they had made me stone hard.
They make us able to handle things that people with ‘soft hands’ can’t. They build a resilience in us that others who haven’t done such things or worked at building up these calluses don’t have. It was the same with my psychological and emotional calluses. Each thing I survived, I built up a psychological callus from; a resistance to whatever had shredded my psyche and left me bleeding, at the time. A resilience. I had worked hard at building these calluses. They were a reminder of when life tried to break me and failed.
For a while, though my psychological calluses were a little too thick. And, much like the calluses on my hands from gymnastics, the thickness of them, got in the way of my performance; in relationships, in friendships, and in life in general. So, I had to shave off some of the calluses to give me peak performance calluses like I would have to compete in the parallel bars. Making sure they weren’t so thick that I couldn’t keep a good grip. I realized that I had become both physically and psychologically resilient; to pain and injury, through the experience of surviving that constant shredding, and by allowing myself to build up calluses instead of shaving them all off every time something happened that built them, in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully and completely understand the importance of vulnerability. I understand and agree that it is important to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to let other’s in to your life and to love honestly, and be your authentic self. However, I also understand the importance of knowing when and how to be vulnerable so you don’t get shredded and left bleeding again. Why it’s important to have some calluses; to not shave them all off. Why ‘soft hands’ make you too vulnerable.
I remember shaking hands with this man. I remember him commenting on my ‘man hands’. I also remember commenting on his ‘soft hands’, and thinking, “Thank you. They’re from when life tried break me, and failed. I wouldn't want soft hands like yours”.