The art of clapping

 

The famous saying goes that it takes two hands to clap. However, I wonder whether anyone has examined the concept between the coordination between the two hands. Maybe I’m just too free today lah.

 

When both hands put in excess effort in the clap, the plus point is that there’s definitely remarkable sound made, but your palms would hurt from the bruises made too. Think of it like two people being very equally over insistent on things to go their way resulting in conflict.

When both hands put in too little effort to clap, the advantage is that there’s no sore palms. However, there may be negligible sound made. In fact in worse situations, the palms may fail to even make contact with each other.

Then there’s the additional element of direction that the palms must be moving. They must move towards each other. It signifies the sincere desire to want to make contact and sound.

What is the optimum performance of clapping such that sound is made while not hurting any palm? In Chinese, there’s the concept of 默契. Seems that coordination is a very technical translation of that concept, but it’ll have to do for now, that is till someone is able to suggest to me a better phrase or word. The amount effort made by one hand must be in synchronization with that of the other hand.

In different relationships with different people and different situations, we want our claps to sound and feel differently. Here, both hands have to take their time and effort to find their optimum harmony. That is unless clapping is not needed or wanted anymore. Then, I’ll go on to answer that other famous question “What is the sound of one hand clapping.” It’s a slap, not clap! And that is a totally different thing altogether. :p