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| "Just Love Hug" rally September 24, 2001 |
Last week, for
reasons that lie completely outside of my area of control, I found myself
propelled into an extremely unlikely set of circumstances. By unlikely, I don’t mean that the
circumstances themselves were unlikely.
These things happen all the time.
By unlikely, I’m referring to my actual presence in the place where
these circumstances existed. My being
in the same zip code with an event like I attended last week are about as
likely as the spontaneous generation of cold fusion in my kitchen sink. In fact, Evolutionary Biology playing itself
out in my refrigerator is one hundred times more probable than me willingly
attending something like this. But I
had no choice, well, in all actuality I guess that I could have refused to even
go near the place, but it really came down to making a choice between offending
people who have made it possible for me to remain in Taiwan, and me being a
little uncomfortable for a few minutes. So after hours of serious deliberation,
I decided that I would prefer a little discomfort to actually being on a plane
headed back to California.
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| The Premier of Taiwan, Wu Den Yi exhorts the crowd. |
Where, you might
ask, did I find myself? At the Zhongli “Just
Love Hug” rally. I have to tell you, I
like people, I love to talk to them, I like to spend time with them, I even look
forward to spending time with people, I’m just not a big hugger. I can’t help it. It’s probably some psychological flaw, some hang-up left over
from some moment of embarrassment or discomfort I experienced as a child. Some Freudian interpreter might blame it my
mother, although my mom is one of the few people that I actually don’t mind
hugging. It’s odd because I’m not a
distant, cool, unapproachable type, but in reality, I only hug my immediate
family and maybe my sisters, and a few close friends who expect it because of
our Hippie days. But that’s really
about it. I have always felt that
hello, goodbye and a nice handshake were perfectly adequate forms of greeting
and farewell. In the late eighties I
took a class where, at then end of the three day seminar, I was required to hug
each of the seventy other participants in the class and about halfway through I
was ready to run screaming for the door.
I was sweaty, rumpled and smelling like a combination of aftershaves,
perfumes, colognes and body odor. I was
pretty well done with mass hug-a-thons at that point. The idea of a mass hug with ten thousand strangers was more than
I could bear. But there I was with nine
thousand nine hundred ninety-nine others listening to them countdown from fifty
to the great hug moment.
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| Counting down to the big moment |
I was frantically
trying to figure out how I could gracefully avoid embracing some well meaning
person, intent on increasing the good feelings of mankind, bringing us all a
little closer and demonstrating the love of humanity. I mean really, I don’t want to hurt someone like that. I really feel those are lofty and worthwhile
goals, but how about looking into each other’s eyes and affirming our value as
human beings, or a group smile, or maybe a little affectionate punch on the
shoulder... but come on, not a hug!
Meanwhile, as I’m working all of this out in my mind, the countdown was plummeting
toward the moment. It was too late to
excuse myself and go to the bathroom.
It was too late to pretend to be intent on tying my shoes. It was too late feign a heart attack. The count had reached zero.
Nothing
happened. Even those on stage, who were
exhorting us toward this moment, were kind of shifting around uncomfortably
until the moment passed. Then it was
over, I didn’t see a single hug exchanged except between lovers in the entire
place.
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| The Hug-a-thon |
Taiwanese people
are warm, friendly and loving people, but they’re not real big on hugging
strangers, either. It was a little bit
easier for me to identify with them, and relate to them after that moment. I felt closer to the Taiwanese people after
that then I ever had before. In fact, I
had good feelings toward mankind in general, I felt closer as a human being to
others than I had before. I even felt a
deeper love of humanity. Hey, maybe
this stuff works.
Other posts you may be interested in:
Photos for the Taiwan Adventure by guest photographer, Wayne Pelren
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