These hands were meant to create

Recently, I borrowed a book from the library about the how's of living a "charmed life". Each chapter describes a different way of how you can achieve it. One was about making things with our hands. The author particularly likes to make handicraft because it makes her feel accomplished. Humans were meant to make things with their hands, because we were born with opposable thumbs, she explained.

I have a pair of nervous hands, which perhaps reflect my personality. They perspire on and off for no reason, and they shake. They don't sound like a major problem, but maybe, due to the human tendency to yearn for what we cannot have, the skills and hobbies that I am interested in usually rely heavily on a pair of steady hands. Like Chinese calligraphy, photography, playing the violin, drawing.

I was having lunch in the office pantry when I overhead this Filippino woman telling her lunch kakis that her hands perspire often.

If you were a guy, you won't be allowed to hold guns for National Services, her local friend quipped.

These hands were not meant to kill. That was the first thought that popped up in my mind about my hands.

But the trembling troubles me, very much in fact. I am making chicken soup for dinner tonight and as I was cutting up the potato and the carrot, my sister and mother watched and commented that I was shaking badly. It was quite a helpless feeling: even for something as basic as cooking, I can't do it properly.

I have been visiting a Chinese physician for acupunture and taking medicine. I sure hope it works. Calm and steady hands, something that others probably take for granted is something that I can only wish I could have one day.