Why Walk?

It was Christmas, perhaps 20 years ago.  I was in Chicago’s cavernous O’Hare airport waiting for my brother Dave and his family to arrive from Phoenix to join the rest of us who had come from Detroit to be together at our folks’ house for the holiday.  Waiting is the wrong word.  I was watching waiting people discover their arriving visitors, and arriving visitors discover those waiting for them.  Smiles, open-armed running approaches, spinning around embraces, quiet, silent, long holding on, not letting go; I was enraptured by the joy.  I don’t remember another thing about that Christmas, but this remains with me, and came to mind when I was watching the Free Hugs videos. 

Challenged by diverse opinions about the campaign, I did some research on the web and found an article by Juan Mann (One man?) the Sydney man who took the campaign viral, to Oprah, and eventually to a “freehelpcampaign” to go beyond hugs to help, and fell short of his hopes.  While I discovered that he was not the first to hold up a sign with “Free Hugs” and offer to brighten people’s lives by human touch and connection, I also learned that he had come up with the idea after watching the joyful hugging going on in an airport arrival lounge.

One of the anonymous commenters to the blog two days ago mentioned the “failure to thrive” issue – babies in a Soviet orphanage in the 60’s who wasted away for no apparent reason despite being kept fed and clean and warm.  Psychologists discovered that it was the lack of human touch, of embrace and communication, which was killing them. 

The little-known but exceptionally insightful Canadian film “The Five Senses” opens in silent darkness.  Eventually a human face becomes distinguishable, a woman’s face, the door of a sensory deprivation tank opened, a towel offered to her by the masseuse, the masseuse who opens to her not only the light, but the warmth of touch.  Later in the film, a quiet man, thin and visibly broken for no apparent reason, comes to her for a massage.  He puts on a towel, exposing a body that is so thin that the thought of A.I.D.S crossed my mind.  He lies down on her table.  At her first touch, he flinches, whimpers, and through his sobbing says, “It has been so long since anyone has touched me.”

In another underrated film “Wrestling with Ernest Hemingway” one old man in Miami puts on the mask of bravado to hide his loneliness, scruffy, vulgar, physical, and sexist.   Another, a quiet, refined, retired barber, is seen practicing Latin dancing alone in his room, holding and spinning and dipping an invisible partner.  A tender scene toward the end of the film finds the barber giving the loud one a haircut and a shave, and the camerawork celebrates the essential element that is missing in each of their lives: touch.

We call them “touching” scenes, “touching” experiences.  But some of us, or perhaps all of us at least a little, don’t want to be touched, want to be left alone.  Jean-Paul Sartre spoke even being seen, of “the hateful stare” that deprived him of his privacy by imposing on him the viewer’s awareness of him.  I think that there is a connection between the first commenter, who spoke of not touching, and the later commenter who wrote of “failure to thrive”.  I find that connection in myself.  I often stand aloof, apart, needing time to be alone.  It can be hurtful to those who love me.  But I believe that the cost to me of such isolation a failure to thrive, to live a life of joy. 

Our daughter Amy and her husband David chose a remarkable image for their wedding invitations 14 years ago.  The image, in the photo above, was inscribed with Lucian de Croszonza’s quote "We are each of us angels with only one wing. And we can only fly while embracing each other."

We can walk, or we can fly.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.