Thirty Seconds To Kindness Elita Sohmer Clayman

Someone gave me such a hard hug last Saturday night that I still have a long week lasting headache from it until today at 5 p.m. I checked it out with my doctor and he said it was a tightness pulled and mild bruising to the facial muscles and a bit of strain. It will heal completely. Take some Tylenol and Aleve and no concussion. Headaches from the muscle and the muscles braced themselves when she hugged me.

Have you ever heard such a silly type hit before? Now, if I should meet George Clooney and he wanted to hug me, I would have to say no. I told an acquaintance of mine this story as she got ready to hug me on Wednesday and she said “OK, I will give you an emotional hug.”

What a nice line. An emotional hug. I like that and we can all give to others through the internet, via email or on the phone, now and then an emotional hug. I always said to Mom on the phone on the three times a day I called her daily, was I love you. Such a simple group of three words and they can move mountains, move doubts, move sadness and most of all move the person who is the recipient of hearing them. Of course, Mom is gone now for almost twenty-eight years; but when I think of her very often, I still say the words.

I use to say to my two children “I love you up to the sky.” Now I say it to my grandchildren. Think about it, the sky is so high and especially in a child’s mind, it is even higher. I had a friend whose son-in law died suddenly when his son was about eight years old. One day, as his widowed mom and grandparents were on their way to the ocean, he looked up and said “dad is with me, I think he can see I am going to have fun in the water.” That made him feel secure as he was going on his vacation trip. It was a tender, yet, sad thought from an eight year old boy who had recently lost his dad.

Once, when we took our older grandchildren to a restaurant, they gave the youngsters a balloon. My second grandson let it go up to the sky when we departed the place. He said it was for his great grandmother, my mom, who he never knew. He said she can hold on to it while up in heaven. Children speak what they feel and most of the time; it is quite suggestive of their loving feelings. They say it with innocence and love.

I always say in these stories, that we ballroom dancers should embolden new people in their dancing with inspiring and complimentary encouragement. I could also add for us dancers to give them my new special words, an emotional hug. An emotional hug can be imagined by someone on the receiving end of a phone call (do people still call on the phone who have computers)? It can be texted though I do text now for the last three weeks, and I love do so, it can be written in a short note send via the post office and it surely can be given by a loving look.

I had to call Verizon up on the phone about retrieving my email that had been disappearing from my monitor screen on the computer. I spoke to a technician and he was in India as it usually is. His name was Ankur and he was very polite, sincere and knowledgeable. He wanted me to hold on as he had to check something out; and he kept saying “please wait 30 seconds.” He always came back in the 30 seconds and apologized for being gone to do what he had to accomplish to straighten out the problem.

I became fascinated with the 30 second line and began to think how nice if we all had to only wait 30 seconds for someone to check a problem out. However, truthfully, 30 seconds is a short time and when I exercise on my stationary bike every day, the dial measures every lap in seconds. Sometimes, it seems they are longer as you wait for the time to finish. Thirty seconds can be a lifetime when we are talked to by someone in a derogatory mode; when we speak in a complimentary way, it is a beautiful 30 ticks of the clock. An emotional hug can last for hours, days, weeks and stay in our memories forever.

So in person, on the email, on the phone, on a text or a handwritten note, give somebody each day an emotional hug. You will be acknowledged, approved and admired for what you have done. It costs no money, no shopping via the stores or online and most of all, you will feel that hug you gave as much as the recipient. Pat Boone (singer from the eighties and nineties) had a daughter Debbie, who made her first singing appearance with a song called You Light Up My Life. She and the song became a sensation. The words were so meaningful and beautiful; it almost became a phrase in life in those days.

So light up someone’s life and give them and yourself an emotional hug. It only takes 30 seconds.