Twenty Seconds?

 

Thirty years ago, when I was a first-year seminary student, one of my classmates -- a divorced woman who lived alone -- was going through a hard time. Without thinking about it, I gave her a hug and it turned from a "token" hug into a "real" hug. At the end, she said, "Thank you for that. I don't get touched much."

That may have been my most important learning from the four years of seminary. 

Early this week, out of nowhere, this popped up on my Facebook page:

“The average length of a hug between two people is three seconds, but researchers have discovered something fantastic. When a hug lasts 20 seconds, there is a therapeutic effect on the body and mind. The reason is that a sincere hug produces a hormone called oxytocin, also known as the love hormone. This substance has many benefits in our physical and mental health, helps us, among other things, to relax, to feel safe and calm our fears and anxiety.”

"Well, that's interesting," I thought, remembering having first learned about oxytocin back in my days with La Leche League. Imagine that giving twenty seconds of my life could have that kind of impact!

That very night I attended a meeting where one of the group's members had returned after an absence of two years. Two years filled with the depleting experience of a slowly dying parent who lived far, far away. This woman had been traveling back and forth to and from western Canada every couple of months, being the rock for her fracturing family of origin. Now she was back here to stay, trying to put the pieces of her life back together. During those two years, I'd somehow become one of her lifelines through the unlikely medium of electronic messaging where a cry for help or a word of support was available at all times.

We met in the middle of the room. I don't know how long that hug lasted. Surely it was at least twenty seconds, likely much longer, and throughout I could feel the change in this woman's body as she began to relax and calm. I think somehow it became a hug from the mother she'd lost and it became, for me, too, a place of security, warmth, and caring as things that had been on my mind faded away. And then we parted, both a little more ready to get on with the meeting, and with our lives.