On Fingernails, Nipples and Who Cares

There are matters that we carry through life without ever questioning them, like, for instance, why do we have fingernails? Despite their questionable usefulness, they live on untouched by logic, experience or argument. They just are. It just doesn’t matter enough to urge us to contemplate them... existentially, that is.

When, if ever, was the last time you looked at those strange, almost bone-like tips to your fingers and wondered, “Why are they there?” Some of us may assume them to be simply an odd consequence of millions of years of evolution that somehow determined that land creatures survived best if their appendages had protective tips: hooves, claws, pads, toenails.

Fingernails are not critical for survival since we ceased to be hunters/gatherers when our defenses rested on the capability in our brains, limbs, torsos and appendages. Uses for fingernails have been devised of course, as in playing the harp or guitar, or nose-picking, but more generally they’re vestigial nuisances, like appendixes (appendices?) or men’s nipples. Dirt depositories.

Many of us grew up assuming that fingernails were simply a part of the essential human body, intelligently designed by an omniscient creator. Perhaps the design included fingernails because the creator foresaw the harp and the guitar. This reasoning (if we ever actually considered it) doesn’t really help to explain men’s nipples.

Others of us who went to school long enough to be challenged to think about such matters settled for a compromise: God created the life we’re living, and Darwin explained how he did it. (Note the “he” pronoun for God; shouldn’t it be he/she or… they?? I’m so confused!)

It’s snowing today, at least where I am. I know how snow develops from moisture in the atmosphere and that gravity causes it to fall to earth. Meteorologists know both that and weather phenomena to the point where they can predict when and where it will fall. John Doe has lived through 60 Saskatchewan winters and knows that a shovel is needed, and roads can be icy, and really, does he need to know much more?

The why and the how of things is that with which scientists, historians, philosophers, agronomists, etc., etc., grapple. But each in our own way, we do plenty of that as well. “Why is my left foot so itchy every night?” Or “What did I do to contract this itch in my left foot?” Quite possibly, the hypochondriacs among us may wonder, “What if it’s cancer and I lose my foot; what kind of future would that leave me?” Mostly we just scratch it, yawn and go to sleep.

Two things: 1) You can’t relive, can’t even revisit the past and 2) you can’t “test pilot” the future to see if you’ll like it. You can, however, find well-being, even happiness to the extent that your health and means allow it, even if you’re flummoxed by the meaning of your life or why your sweater is chafing the nipples you absolutely never needed.

For now, some of us choose to wonder less about the whys and the hows of the big questions. Instead, we clip our nails regularly and clean them as necessary, neither evolutionists nor creationists exempted.

               Some of us paint them.

NAICA  gg.epp41@gmail.com