The Human Touch

When I was getting sober in Indianapolis I developed some friendships with other people who were also early in their sobriety.  One person who stands out was a young woman about my age who spent all day at home with her two young children and got to some meetings after her husband got home from work.  I remember nothing about our conversations, not one specific anecdote.  It just felt anchoring to talk to someone else trying to sort out the shitstorm of their life at the same time I was.  One evening I must have followed up a conversation from a previous meeting when she burst into tears.  I stood there looking at her like she just stepped out of a flying saucer.  I absolutely froze.  My sponsor was nearby and he hustled over and asked her if she wanted a hug which she definitely did.  After a minute he asked her if she wanted a hug from me as well.  She collapsed against me while I stood there like a shipping pallet, an oak tree.  I had no idea how to handle a pretty unremarkable display of human emotion and one that involved touching another person and touching another person of the opposite sex.

I grew up in a conservative, reserved, religious no-bullshit German family.  I can't remember being hugged or touched.  I definitely can't remember anyone telling me they loved me.  It may have happened, especially the second part, but I don't remember it.  It wasn't common, I'll tell you that.  And I'm not being overly critical here of my family, either.  It was a pretty nice, totally ordinary family, typical of the U.S. in the 50s and 60s, and I was fed and watered and bunked down and educated and given a lot of solid moral instruction, all of which puts me in rarefied air when it comes to upbringing.  Just go to some meetings and listen to people talk about the crap they dealt with growing up to gain some perspective.

I touch people a lot in Alcoholics Anonymous.  I believe people like my touch.  No one has taken a swing at me yet.  I touch people when I'm walking by them - a pat on the arm or tap on the head - and I give out hugs - I demand hugs, always careful with women, always asking first if I don't know them well - and sometimes I even kiss the bald dudes on top of their bald heads or sneak up behind someone and give them a big kiss on the cheek.  Nobody does this to me, come to think of it.  Probably I'm a little too proactive so they know what's coming.  This is my thing.  This is what I do and who I am and it's pretty amazing that I've gotten to this place - and this is a relatively recent development for me - after the lessons I learned as a child.

Here's one of those arresting coincidences that pop up whenever I can pop my head out of my ass and pay attention to the world around me.  It's in the book written by a teacher versed in the spirituality of the Toltec civilization and I'll remind you that this Mesoamerican dynasty started sometime around 600 A.D.  That's fourteen centuries ago for the math-challenged among us which means it's old as hell which means that the spiritual stuff we find so instructive today didn't come about in the last fifty years.  Shit is old.

"You express your own divinity by loving yourself and others  It is an expression of God to say, 'Hey, I love you.' "  I ask my own Higher Power each morning that I be able to express my Higher Power's presence to the world in whatever way my Higher Power chooses.  I like to be much bigger than I am using my own will and wiles and intentions and I need outside help to accomplish that.