Human Seeking; Hug Coach!

She hugged me so hard I damn near cried and I never stopped thinking about it! But more about that in a moment.

Recently I’ve been giving some serious thought to the way I hug other humans. I want to embrace them not just with my arms but also with my heart. As though I see them for the human they are and I am honored; rather inspired by their presence. I know it sounds sappy, but coming out of the pandemic and not being able to see anyone smile let alone touch them, has gotten me inspired to embrace humanity fully and without cation. However, I find myself being very very bad at it. For starters I tend to hug ass out, you know where you stick your ass out so as to not glide into the other person’s mid-section. Then when I hug a guy I almost always require a continuous handshake to keep our chests from not touching. This goes contradictory to everything I want to come across in my idea of the perfect hug.

This is why I want to hire a hug coach! So one to help me with my posture, my mannerisms, and most importantly my emotional connection during the hug. I would like the hug to exude empathy, compassion, and understanding. I want the hug to connect us beyond the conversation. Most people say that you rarely remember the conversation with someone but you remember how they made you feel. I want my hugs to be the exclamation point in that feeling. When the person reflects on our interaction in their personal soliloquy I want them to smile a bit and think that my friend was one of the best hugs I have ever had.

The other day I was on a second date with someone I met randomly at a restaurant. Our second date was walking through the Downtown and ended with a tour of Walt Disney Concert Hall. She had two cats and recently lost one to old age, and cried a bit at the top of the concert hall when I ask how her cats were doing since I saw them on her Instagram. She had recently divorce from her husband after following him here to the United States a few years back. Because of the pandemic, she hasn’t been able to go back to her country of birth where most of her family lives. The combination of these two things left her with very few options to express her feelings about losing her cat to someone in person that wasn’t a business colleague or a family member thousands of miles away in a different time zone over the phone. We sat, I listened, and tried to console. We walked back in the direction of her apartment building. It was about noon now and she lived in a busy building. I reached out my hand to shake hers and say goodbye and she quickly embraced me tightly. The hug lasted a few moments and as we parted she said thank you for listening. I nodded and we went our separate ways. I nodded to avoid a crackling voice and to hold back tears of my own. I nodded because the emotions that she had felt came through clearly; you were present, engaged and you heard me thank you.

That hug was the exclamation point on a job well done. I walked away feeling like I found a superpower. This is a small power, but the world needs more super huggers. The world needs more compassion, empathy, and patience. I will take that with me forever and I want to pass this feeling on to someone else now. But it’s not easy and this is why I am looking for a hug coach.

• This is day 14
• This is a random item in my notes
• This took me 1 hour to write and proof