In this reading Dr. Sacks tells the beautiful story of a blind woman with cerebral palsy who learns to use her hands at the age of 60. She learns for the first time to touch, to feel, and to create. She was convinced that her hands were “worthless lumps of dough.” Her lack of use resulted in a complete lack of functionality. This story stirs up questions of how and what can be learned and at what stage of life.

You have likely been faced with situations that have convinced you that you don’t have the talent or ability in one area or another. This conviction often leads to avoidance which begins a cycle that serves to reinforce the original assumption. I hope this story causes you to look again at areas of your life you may be neglecting.

• “Hands” by Oliver Sacks (this essay was included in Sacks book “The Mand Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat”)

Discussion Questions:

1. Are your notions of talent and natural abilities counter productive to developing skills that could bring a richness to your life you may not have thought possible?
2. Are there skills or abilities that you avoid exercising because you are convinced you don’t possess the capacity to acquire them?
3. Could our Biblical understanding of “giftedness” be misapplied? Can the conclusion that we possess some ‘gifts’ and not others cause us to lose sight of the fact that God has given us an almost incomprehensible capacity to learn?

Author Biography

Oliver Sacks, M.D. is a physician, best-selling author, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.

He is the author of ten books, including The Mind’s Eye, Musicophilia, Awakenings, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat — and was the first to receive honors as a Columbia University Artist, in recognition of his contributions to the arts. (Taken from www.oliversacks.com.)

For Oliver Sacks’ 80th birthday, the Radiolab podcast published an interview in which Saks reflects on his career.  The interview (which you can listen to here) raises interesting quesitons about the proper relationship between creative writing and scientific research.