The Power Of A Hug
What is the power of a hug?
The fellow in the video below is Juan Mann. A couple of years back he was living in London, and had to fly back to his native Australia. When he landed he was standing alone in the arrivals terminal, with nothing but a single bag full of clothes. No one to welcome him back. No place to call home. Watching other passengers meeting their waiting friends and family, with open arms and smiling faces, hugging and laughing together.
In that moment he realized that deep down what he most wanted was someone to be happy to see him. To smile at him. To hug him. So he got a piece of cardboard and wrote ‘Free Hugs’ on it, and after a quarter hour of people staring right through him, an old woman walked up and gave him a hug. When she left, both of them were smiling.
Juan decided right then that his life mission was to reach out and hug people to brighten their lives. So he’d go out and offer people free hugs. The police tried to shut him down, but not even they could stop him. Juan has been a guest on Oprah Winfrey and his website freehugscampaign.com has spread hugs all across the globe.
Juan has obviously struck a chord with many people, but he’s certainly not the first person to discover the incredible power of hugs.
Throughout history, there are numerous stories of great people who grasped the power of an embrace.
There’s a story in the Bible about Jesus interacting with some children. People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but some of his friends shooed the kids away, which apparently kind of ticked Jesus off. He said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them. Mark 10:13-16 NIV
In that little story we see one of the great, unchanging principles of meaningful human relationships. And that is this: there is real power in simple, loving touch. The kind of loving and appropriate touch that communicates an indelible message of unconditional love and acceptance.
In the Thirteenth Century, there was a king named King Frederick II. And like many kings and political leaders, he had no problem with undertaking social experiments on the people he was supposed to be leading.
One time King Frederick II tried a particularly warped little social experiment. He was curious … What language would a child speak if that child was never, ever spoken to from the time he or she was born? The king rounded up fifty newborn babies and had some ladies agree to take care of the infants, but the only stipulation was they were not allowed to speak ever to these babies, or show affection or emotion. They could feed the babies, change the diapers … but no words. No hugs or tummy tickles.
The King never learned the answer to his question, because within a year, although they had all received plenty of physical food and physical nourishment, every last child had died.
What we know now from actual studies done on orphanages in different parts of the world is that children simply don’t develop emotionally or even physically if they don’t get a certain amount of physical touch as infants. What does that say about the power of a hug?
Maybe you’re the of person who is naturally expressive with touch. You like to hug and hug and kiss and all of that kind of stuff. Maybe you’re a little bit more reserved, just not real huggy, huggy, touchy, feely.
I’m naturally kind of more on the reserved side, and for years, I was very happy and quite content without having people wrap their fleshy tentacles around my body. I would just say, you know, “I’m not a touchy kind of guy.”
I even made up my own man-rules, especially when it came to, like guys touching guys. A good firm handshake, a look in the eye, that was a sacred moment for me. Anything else was questionable. In my mind, a good solid hug was a shoulder check, three pats, break, and walk away.
Unless you are playing sports. Then all the touch rules change, which is funny for guys, because if you are playing sports, you can do all these touches that would otherwise be inappropriate. A guy can pat a guy on the butt in sports, and that is … fine! Imagine you’re at your office and your colleague does a good presentation. “Hey, good presentation, (pat, pat, pat, pat)!” Hey, only in sports, right?
I’m a person who’s naturally not real touchy-feely. For most of my life, huggy people really annoyed me. But something has seriously changed for me over the past years, especially since we had kids.
This might sound kinda weird, but I really believe that God did something in my life that has changed my heart around all of this. A number of things happened that opened my eyes, and one of them was receiving some simple, honest feedback from a good friend of mine.
A few years ago when our kids were younger, we were talking and the whole subject of kids and hugs came up, and at one point my friend said “You’re not a very huggy sort of guy, are you?” I responded “Well, I can be, you know, at gunpoint. Why do you say that?”
She said “Well, I noticed a few days ago you were sitting down and one of your kids came and wanted to sit on your lap, and you just kind of pushed them away.” I scrunched up my eyebrows and said “What? When? Where?” She said ‘Well, you were reading a book, and I guess you were right into it, and the kids were annoying you or something, but I just realized in that moment how unaffectionate you are.”
It was like I had just been slapped across the face. I mean, no parent wants to hear something like that. It brought up all sorts of junk for me, and her words upset me more than I cared to admit.
But once I stopped being defensive and angry and self-righteous, I began to open myself up to the possibility that perhaps, at times, I was withholding physical affection from the people who mattered most to me in my life.
And so, after a lot of thinking and some prayer, I decided that with God’s help I was going to change. It started with my family. And you can ask them. And they’ll tell you. Over the past few years, I have increasingly become the most huggy, lovey, guy you have ever seen. I hug and hug and hug and hug.
And if you’re one of those non-huggers like I used to be, right about now I can see you eyeballing the back button on your browser. Hey, let’s be honest. A lot of times being too huggy can be inappropriate, and there are situations where throwing out a hug is just weird. We’ve all got a creepy relative or a work colleague or someone in our lives who doesn’t know when a hug just isn’t called for. (Hey, if you walk up to me on the street, and I don’t know you, and you try to hug me, I’m probably going to poke you right in the eye!)
But truthfully, every single day, my wife gets a big hug and I tell her I love her, and every day the first thing I do when I see my kids every morning is give them a big huge long hug and tell them how great they are, and if I’m home I do the same thing before they go to bed. Even during the day I’ll grab them and give them big hugs whenever I can.
It hasn’t always been that way.
But since I’ve opened myself up to the power of hugs, I can see the difference in my whole family.
So all that said, just let me ask you, what’s the story you tell yourself? Maybe you say, “Well, I’m not affectionate, I’m just not all that huggy. That’s just me.”
Ok. I get that. Believe me.
Are you willing to open yourself up to the possibility of change? (Maybe for no other reason than because touch and hugs and loving words are so critically important to all our lives?)
Are you open to learning how to be affectionate?
Are you willing to ask for it?
Matthew 6:56 speaking of Jesus, says this: “And whenever he went into villages, towns, or countryside, they placed the sick in the marketplaces, they begged him to let them touch him, even the edge of his clothes and all who touched him were healed.” The word “touched” appears in the Gospels roughly twenty times in regard to Jesus. And every single time it is always in regards to healing of some kind. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Maybe touch does something that no amount of words can do.
Hey, maybe the entire Bible, the entire story of Jesus Christ has a lot to teach us about the importance of human touch.
After all, whether you buy it or not, the Bible is the story of the creator of the universe deciding that it wasn’t good enough for him to just paint pictures in nature to show us he loves us, or to get prophets to tell us he loves us, or to give us words to read about his love for us. Nope. He decided that the only way he could really communicate his love for us human beings was to leave heaven and come down to this earth to show us his affection for us, to touch us, to heal us.
Maybe the story of Christ is nothing more than a story of the ultimate, free, eternal hug.
So, how about it? Why not join the hug revolution? Who knows. Maybe we can change the world.
It is a very nice vedio.I love it and make me laugh end of the hectic day of my work.