Holding hands may seem like an innocent gesture, but they show more than a simple interlocking of fingers. Your hands are one of the most essential parts of your body: you build with them, feed with them, hold with them, touch with them, fight with them; they are the tools of the human body.

To take a hold of another’s hand is to break from living individually. It is to link yourself to another being, to momentarily entwine your life with another’s, to promise, for a moment, that you need not face the world alone. More simple, more aesthetically naive than other forms of affection, the act of holding hands is often trivialized in its true implications.

As the Beatles once said all I want to do is hold your hand.