Hug more often

Remember the old Bell telephone ad campaign? Reach out and touch someone?

The internet has made it possible on all levels to connect like never before. Minute by excruciating minute updates, photos, fights and feelings. Pick a card, any card.

Study after study shows we’ve never felt more alone. There’s a dual edged sword at play: people isolated by geography can bridge the distance and be present and be instantly connected in ways that once took many weeks or even more dollars. But people isolated by behaviour or circumstance can disappear into a created world and leave the real one behind.

A massage therapist I see occasionally told me that she has clients who come in for therapeutic reasons, but also emotional ones. There is a deep-seated human need to be touched. A doctor friend of mine has said the same thing. It’s a tactile thing, not a sexual one. We may be able to brag about how connected we are but our highly developed brains are wreaking havoc with our very human needs.

I was raised by a highly affectionate woman. My mom was a hugger in every sense of the word. You were hugged if you were happy. You were hugged if you were upset. You were hugged just because everybody should be hugged. She would automatically hold my hand to cross a street, and both of us pretended not to notice when it shifted from being about my safety to being about hers.

As a teenager, she hugged my friends. I would wince in teenage embarrassment, but to this day, many of them tell me how nice it was to come here, to be welcome and treated with such kindness. I’m not sure which was more popular: her hugs or her blueberry muffins.

My father would pat you on the head once in a while, and while I’m sure it was my mother’s affectionate nature that drew him to her, he was raised in too much violence to ever be totally comfortable displaying the same openness. I’d hug him against his will, telling him I loved him and I wouldn’t let him go until he told me he loved me. We’d laugh and he’d choke out the words, but I remember feeling a sense of loss that he couldn’t go through life the way my mother did, somehow able to show love without calculation, accept warmth without question.

A neighbour I admired  greatly growing up was an elderly widow who’d once been a teacher. From her sensible shoes to her precise home, everything in her world was ordered, including her conversations, her purchases and her plans. Her rigidity was an imposing barrier, but I was too young to notice. Seeing a picture propped up in her home one day, I asked about it. Her 18-year-old son, lost decades before to cancer. I saw her pale eyes tear up. I didn’t understand such loss at the time, but I knew to hug her. We sat and I held her hand. She told me about her boy, and I listened. I was probably 10, and I learned that day the power of holding another’s hand. I imagined my own love and support flowing through to her, because that’s what 10-year-olds imagine.

Visiting friends at a large outdoor festival recently, the thronging crowds threatened to separate us. I instinctively grabbed the hand of my smallest friend, lest she be swallowed by the crowd. It felt natural and normal as we laughed and braided our way through the teeming streets.

Say I love you. Hug more often. Hold hands.

Your personal internet need never be down.