I give you a hug using my arms, my hands, my chest… Who’s hugging?
In giving you a hug, I offer a soft invitation to feel me,
and yet, if I want to feel you, I can’t worry about the consistency of my own hug:
I need to be unpreoccupied about how it will feel, about what is there inside,
moving in my chest.
I need to be willing to hide nothing,
I need to trust completely that you are doing the same.
or better,
I need to be absolutely unpreoccupied about what you will do with my hug.
How you will decide to dance with the universe inside my chest will be your freedom,
a freedom I must grant you completely if I want to give you a hug.
I’ll also have to place my head somewhere. There are lots of options.
I can give you a hug and place my head on your chest, with the crown of my head touching your chin. I can also lay my head on your right shoulder, or let my left cheek touch your right cheek.
Well, the point is, there are actually endless possibilities.
The head became just another limb, another sensor, it follows the will of our bodies together.
I can choose who I hug, and I can choose who I am as I hug (Or can I?)
I can’t choose who I hug, and I can’t choose who I am as I hug.
I might hug you and be a tiny child hugging her mom.
I might hug you as a teenager girl hugging her dad after a fight.
I might hug you and hug all men,
I can hug you and be your mother, while you are hugging your grandma.
I might hug you and change the position of my head or start moving my fingers on your back, and suddenly, instead of being your grandma, I’ll be the little sister you never met.
and If, as I hug you, I stay with all that is happening to me,
And If I manage to want absolutely nothing from either myself or from you.
If I have nothing better to do, nothing to decide, nothing to assess, nothing to betray, nothing to portray, nothing to fix,
in between all of this, I might also just be me, hugging you,
and you might just be yourself, hugging me.
And you can become at the same time all of it: my mother, the small child, the grandma, the puppy, and the night full of stars, and yet you. Fully you. And I can be fully me.
That is what I understand today is a hug, a full hug.
