Send Hugs to Those Who Need Them

2014  09  12  

0200

Thank goodness I’ve got the Mamm Books done and have a few days off here – it’s supposed to be a mite chillier than it usually is at this time of the year so I’m glad I’ll be able to be home to feed my wood stove – and have some days to spend gathering wood to fill my  basement.

The silver lining? Hopefully goodbye to the mosquitoes and flies!

I had no intention in this world of staying up this late tonight but found myself watching 9/11 footage when I got home from work – footage I’ve been avoiding seeing (FEELING) for all these years.

I’m not sure why this year is different … the emotions are still raw and powerful … maybe I’ve gotten stronger, or maybe the impact has waned enough for others so that there’s not so MUCH unfocused emotion in the air in general.

Don’t mistake my words – unfocused is the key one in that last phrase.

September 11 is still a day that evokes powerful emotions so that’s still in the air. I believe I am stronger now than I’ve been before, ready to feel what’s in the air.

So what am I feeling?

All of it. ALMOST all of it is still there – I think maybe the fear factor is what has diminished, but don’t quote me on that.

It could be that all of us somehow have come to associate this day with the sense of unity that had us on our knees on that day.

Maybe not literally, but I’d be willing to wager (if I had anything to wager) that the phrase most used on that day was ‘Oh my God!’ It’s certainly the phrase I’ve heard the most now that I’ve finally begun viewing the footage, and it was certainly the one I heard the most on that day itself.

Yes, even from the most devout of atheists, the first words out of our mouths were, ‘Oh my God!’ Intentionally or not, it was a day of prayer.

United prayer, and not just us Americans.

And that makes a statement all its own.

As an arrogant American, I have to say that the outpouring of reaction from around the world that one event sparked was so very poignantly needed – it was as though the arms of our world came around us in a strong warm hug.

I think we drew strength from that hug, as do we as humans always draw strength from hugs.

We needed that hug and our world stepped right up to us and even in the shock and grief of that day we felt it, that strong solid hug from our world when we most needed it.

I don’t know that we’ve ever said ‘thank you’ and so at this late date I will raise my own little one-person Voice and say to our world : THANK YOU

For a moment in time the unity of our nation as we shouted or whispered or murmured or wept the words, ‘Oh my God!’ was shared by our world (most of it; and the few who said hooray kept a darned low profile, relatively speaking).

Having said that, now I have a question of my own.

And my question is:

How come we can’t seem to maintain that feeling of connectedness, of unity? Like all the time, I mean.

It’s there – it’s HERE – as we weep with and for one another all the time when something happens to bring one or another of us to our knees, figuratively speaking but literally as well, in prayer, in shock, in pain … we do weep with and for one another in our world – all around our whole huge wide world we feel the feelings of those of us who are hurting.

So maybe I was wrong in thinking that we don’t maintain that feeling … because I think it’s still very much alive and well on planet Earth.

The kicker is that it’s we ourselves who are causing most of the hurts that hurt us all, those of us who can and do feel, which is the vast majority of us, believe it or not.

That hurting is ever-present … and the ones who need the hugs don’t always get them I think.

Does Ukraine feel the hugs I send?

Does Israel?

Does Syria?

Does Africa?

Do the non-coms who are being hurt all over our world feel the hugs I send?

I don’t know.

I send them anyhow.

Because you just never know.

Perhaps somebody somewhere will feel an inexplicable bit of comfort, or find a tiny spark of hope within themselves when all is dark.

There is much that we don’t understand at work in our world; is it not worth sending out those hugs, just in case?

Yes.

We’ll never know, of course, but does it not make sense for those of us who make up the vast majority of humanity on this planet of ours to do something as simple as sending hugs to one another?

Think of it!

The whole air of our world so filled up with the hugs of all of us, one for another, that no space is left for the nasties.

Ha.

If we focus on hugging, we’re certainly not thinking about how to do each other in.

Yep.

And that’s just about enough of that, b.

Heh heh.

Yeah I know.

But you know what?

One small little 9/11 related incident comes to mind.

At noon on the Friday following, everyone was supposed to take thirty minutes to just be still.

The construction contractor on the interstate highway project we were working on at the time had no intention of any such thirty minutes interrupting the day’s work.

Now, on one end of the project you have the mill guy on the work site, stripping off the old asphalt so as to prepare the way for the new stuff.

At the other end of the project you have the scale operator who weighs and records the materials the trucks are hauling to and from the work site.

‘Coincidentally’ on that Friday the mill operator just stopped, right in the middle of what he was doing at the exact same moment that the scale operator shut down scaling operations – totally not having the faintest clue that the other person was doing the same thing. These two people had never met, and either of them alone could shut down the project. That the both of them chose to do so – and that there was not a sound from any of the radios in the trucks or equipment for thirty minutes – and that every truck and every piece of equipment and every vehicle on that project didn’t move for thirty minutes on that Friday – and that neither the mill operator nor the scale operator ever heard a word from the bosses about disobeying a direct order – well, it just kind of makes a statement all its own, doesn’t it?

A small, insignificant, incident in the bigger scope of things, yet when the time came those two people just did what they did without any big to-do about it. Independently from one another, each made a choice that could well have cost them their jobs. Knowing that, they did it anyhow.

Sometimes you just have to do what you know to be right and damn the torpedoes.

Hug our world, people. It’s the only one we’ve got.