{"id":29776,"date":"2020-04-19T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2020-04-19T07:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=29776"},"modified":"2020-04-19T00:01:20","modified_gmt":"2020-04-19T07:01:20","slug":"hugging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/hugging\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Coronavirus, What Will Happen to All That Hugging We’ve Been Doing? Sheltering at Home Week 6"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"hugging<\/a>
You Tube host Cordero Roman<\/a> demonstrates the fake hug on his YouTube video. He wants people to hug, really hug, strangers the way they hug loved ones. I like his moxie, but it’s not for me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sheltering at Home Week Six<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hugging. I like hugging my friends. I like hugging my kids. And, wow, hugging a grandchild — there’s nothing quite like it.<\/p>\n

Hugs — you see them everywhere these\u00a0 days. At least you used to. On pre-coronavirus TV, talk show hosts welcomed guests with the obligatory hug. Reality show contestants exchanged showy hugs with mentors the moment they met each other. Prefunctory hugs were routinely exchanged by sweaty basketball players post-game. And on the street: crowds of teenagers hugged each other hello and good-bye.<\/p>\n

Fake Hugs<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Why does this hug-everybody trend bug me?<\/p>\n

Because so often it doesn’t seem genuine. How can it be? A hug signifies intimacy, and how can you feel intimate with a person you’ve just met or barely know?<\/p>\n

It’s touchy-feely kumbaya, this profligate hugging trend that<\/p>\n

\"hugging<\/a>
There’s lots of hugging on reality shows like American Idol. Here, Adam Lambert and Dimitrius Graham after singing “Bohemian Rhapsody.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

has found its way somehow into the American armamentarium of social niceties. It’s “let’s acts as though\u00a0 we live in a world where everybody gets along just fine. Let’s all be — not just neighbors, not just colleagues, not just classmates — but intimates. Best friends forever.”<\/p>\n

How many best friends can a person have, really?<\/p>\n

Personally, I like a little time to pass, and an actual friendship to evolve, before I do any serious hugging.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit, though. Sometimes those homey friendship feelings evolve pretty fast. A long afternoon’s conversation on a beach cabin in Michigan, with the Big Lake pounding in the background, thoughts, feelings, worries and hopes exchanged over a glass (but probably two glasses) of chardonnay, and I’m hooked. The connection has been made. I feel the need for a hug when the brand-new friends depart.<\/p>\n

What’s a Friend? What’s an<\/strong> Acquaintance?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

When it comes to friendship and hugs, I might still be under the influence of the year I spent in Germany as a young woman fresh out of college. The German word for friend — Freund<\/em> — was used sparingly in Germany.<\/p>\n

When I misused it, applying it casually to a classmates or acquaintance (Bekannte<\/em>), my German friends — yes, they were friends– were quick to set me straight.\u00a0 They took friendship seriously. Once established, they explained, a friendship could last a lifetime.<\/p>\n

I realized that, for the Germans I knew, describing an acquaintance as a friend eroded the meaning of the word and the very institution of friendship.<\/p>\n

Hugging Post-Coronavirus<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Hand shaking is a precarious endeavor these shelter-at-home, pandemic days. So is elbow bumping and giving a high five. Hugging is out of the question, of course. But hopefully we are all locked down with at least one person we can hug. Or could hug, before being cooped up together for the past month.<\/p>\n

Once this COVID-19 critter has taken its spiky self off the face of the earth, it will be nice to have the the handshake and the high five back in our social repertoire. As for those fake hugs, might they go the way of the very real virus? I hope so.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this installment of my Sheltering at Home Chronicles<\/a>, consider signing up for regular email updates<\/a>.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>More musings on friends and acquaintances at “I Miss My Friends. But I Miss My Acquaintances More.”<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"hugging<\/a>
Hugging hospital workers, shown on a TV newscast. Nothing fake about this group hug, I suspect.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"hugging<\/a><\/p>\n

Personally, I like a little time to pass, and an actual friendship to evolve, before I do any serious hugging with somebody. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,41],"tags":[2243,2179,34,655,1496,2244,2245,82,2246,2185],"class_list":["post-29776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-sheltering-at-home-chronicles","tag-acquaintances","tag-coronavirus","tag-dont-miss","tag-friends","tag-germany","tag-handshakes","tag-hugging","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-popular-culture","tag-social-distancing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}