The Hug

Sometimes I wonder why some psychiatrist, hasn’t latched on to me to write a new textbook. Today, I’d like to tell you about my neurosis regarding hugging.

Now, I grew up in a loving family. I never once doubted that my mother and father and my sister loved me. Having stated that, my family just didn’t hug much. It’s not that there wasn’t hugging, it just wasn’t often enough to make it common. It was reserved more for special occasions.

I’m most definitely an introvert which means that I wouldn’t know how to initiate a hug but secretly hope someone grabs me and hugs the stuffing out of me.

Add to this, I’m a guy so society has taught me that any affection could be interpreted against me because I’m a man. I know, I know some of you are already looking for me to set me straight but that’s the message I feel society sends men. It wasn’t that long ago were I was required to complete online sexual harassment training where almost every hypothetical situation ended with the answer, “It depends.”

Let me tell you about a couple of people. The first is someone I used to work with, an unabashed hugger. Let’s call her “Mrs. C.” I remember the first time Mrs. C came into my office to discuss something work related and she eventually asked me if she could hug me. I remember how good it felt when she hugged me. It wasn’t sexual at all, just one person showing another person that she cared. I came to look forward to my interactions with Mrs. C. that ended in a hug. It wasn’t a common occurrence but it was memorable. Important to note, Mrs. C. was an indiscriminate hugger so I never thought I was being targeted.

The other person is a young person, let’s call her “Ms. E.” Like Mrs. C., Ms. E. Is an unabashed hugger. If I remember correctly, the first time I met her, she came into the church and started going around hugging people. I watched her doing this, secretly hoping that she’d include me in her hugging but the introvert part of me was trying to hide it from showing. She hugged me.

Isn’t it amazing that something so simple as a hug can have such a complex emotional connotation?

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ESV

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m secretly hoping for more hugs and from more people…