>> Here is a challenge for you. Try to explain what a handle points to without using a word that is a sinonym of "object". <<

That is a little hard since any noun could be called an "object". Every paradigm deals with nouns, just differently. OOP simply tends to group and focus on them more than others. Its philosophy is that Nouns is King. IOW, it does not just "have" nouns, it elevates them.

But the practicality of it is that I don't know what handles point to in most cases. It could be pointing to gerbals on treadmills powering the database. That implimentation detail is abstracted away such that the app developer does not have to worry about that when they use the handle. Perhaps OOP implements gerbals better, but that won't help the handle user because they don't see the basement.