Snails

Snails don’t have hands. Can’t you imagine how much trouble they’d be in if they did? They feel danger and pull back inside, divorcing the world for the safety of their swirled, calcareous shells. How comfortable it must be in there—where threats are reduced only to clicks and scratches on their walls as they embrace themselves, layer on top of layer. Now, give that snail hands and its trouble starts. Danger is coming, but it’s holding on to something it’s spent energy to approach and eat—it’s invested. There’s no room for two in the singular safety the snail enjoys, so it exposes itself and holds the connection while its hand is chewed, pecked, or smashed off. It’s a snail so the hand grows again, and, inexorably, danger comes again. The hand grips tighter this time, that first want mixed now with frustration and defiance. Another hand lost.

How many repetitions of this predictable show play out before the snail stops investing? How many times can you invest and fail before your hands stop reaching out?

Humanity isn’t defined by the opposable digit with which you can so efficiently manipulate your environment, or by the bipedal manner with which you move toward food, shelter, or a mate. You’re not able to weigh humanity on a scale against the tenants of a government or an exclusive religion, and a monument or structure can hardly be said to be a bottle for it. Humanity is a verb. Not a stagnant noun, but a kinetic reaching to form connections—pulling and supporting. Being intangible precludes it from being destroyed, but doesn’t prevent inhumane actions.

A decade past, during the war in my current country, pregnant mothers were eviscerated, their intestines used as ropes to cordon off roads—but not before bets were placed on the sex of the unborn baby that was torn out of the mother. Nails were driven through the genitals of village elders and they were given the choice to tear themselves and escape, or be shot through the head when their captors returned. After watching their families murdered, fathers were forced to rape their daughters and then had both hands cut off to make it harder to kill themselves.

It’s absurd to think horror can diminish humanity in the least though. It’s connections not only streamed around the depravity of that war, but through it. I’m incredibly humbled to work with one Rev. L. J. Bokarie at my school. During that difficult wartime, he took in twins whose mother had died in childbirth. Traditionally seen to have bad spirits that killed their mother’s, they’re usually abandoned by their families. When his village was attacked, the babies were taken to hide in the jungle. The soldiers pursued them and the babies were smothered to death because their cries were leading the soldiers to the hiding villagers.

Rev. Bokarie took in three more orphans after that, and each, one by one, eventually died in the war from disease or brutality. How could someone do that? Any animal would fold after that much painful conditioning. Put your hands in your pocket. Give up on connecting.

Humanity is what reaches out, over and over, to connect, to pull, to support—even when horror repeatedly burns your hands. Don’t be a snail.