Hands are so important to how we express ourselves.

When a hand is closed, clenched, fisted, it not only cannot give, it also cannot receive.

I guess most of us don’t choose to live this way, it creeps up on us.

A clenched life may be protecting itself, angry, or ready to fight back.

Openhandedness describes a way of living which consciously, and with much effort, prises ourselves open to know more, to connect more, and to do more.

There are always plenty of things which try to force our hands closed again, but the very nature and content of being openhanded makes us stronger.

I came upon three small examples about how openhanded living leads to more.

The language we use changes things:

‘New times demand new words,
because the old words don’t help
us see the world differently.’*

As a new word, humbleness used in a powerful way:

‘Simple, humble spaces, help focus
attention on the deep practice task at
hand: reaching and repeating and struggling.’**

Everyone brings something:

‘Never once have I heard one big, fully
formed, complete idea arrive full-blown
in a single comment.  Not at Disney, Apple,
Chick-fil-A, or John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.’^

(*From Seth Godin’s Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck.)
(**From Daniel Coyle’s The Little Book of Talent.)
(^From McNair Wilson’s Hatch.)
(Cartoon: I used a Sharpie to “tattoo” “Openhandedness” on my palm today; the only way I could see it was by opening my hand.)