The dictionary defines "affection" as: "A tender feeling toward another; fondness;" and more elaborately, via the thesaurus, as: "The condition of being closely tied to another by affection or faith - attachment, devotion, fondness, liking, love, loyalty. See "connect."
Ahh, "connection." The feeling that we two are moving together towards a common goal - are yoked together in care and consideration and fellow feeling. Sounds so good. "There's a real connection there," we say; "I feel connected to you." If only combat veterans also could rely on this, themselves. It seems pretty clear they establish it with one another; but the question remains, are they able to sustain that, or to find it with anyone else?
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Back in the days when I had other things on my mind besides combat trauma -- ahh, the halcyon days of youth ;-) -- I remember going to hear Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain at the Opera House in Boston, right before he finished his run. Holbrook, parroting Twain, had a very interesting remark, that echoes in my mind today about the plight of veterans, and whether (and how much) we show them that we care. The remark came towards the end of Holbrook's performance, and it was meant to symbolize an elderly Twain, winding down the course of his life, and wrapping it up for public consumption. In that context, this is what he said (writeup mine):
Seating himself in the easy chair and stretching his long legs before him, Twain lit the last cigar of the evening. As he drew steadily on the cigar he reflected out loud on the hundreds and hundreds of letters that he’d received throughout the length of his career from his accumulated audience. “These letters,” he said, with gratitude animating his face, “have contained compliments, and pride, and a note of affection. And the last of those is the last and final and richest reward that a man can have.”
The last and richest reward a man can have? Sounds pretty good to me. I wonder if that's how we're treating veterans, though -- or marginalizing them to the edge of society with their scary stories we can't relate to, and their trauma we just want to ignore? Hope not. This New Yorker cartoon I saw recently reminds me of the plight of veterans on the subject: still waiting to be brought into the conversation with America, still waiting to be heard. Let's hope it isn't so, or won't continue to be so.
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More on the "affection/connection" front:
A few years ago, again living in Boston, I took the opportunity to see a documentary at an independent movie house called "Darshan: the Embrace," about India's "hugging saint," Ammachi, a.k.a. Amma, a.k.a. Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Sanskrit for "Mother of Immortal Bliss"). There were only two people in the movie theater (my being one), which goes to show you how little pull the concept had, but the movie was most mystifying to me. It was a documentary about the apparently considerable impact of an Indian woman whose sole raison d'etre was that she would dole out hugs to those who wanted them. Really.
At the risk of insulting someone's religion, and I hope I don't (but probably will), that really was all there was to it. Amma has apparently hugged hundreds of thousands, perhaps literally millions, of people worldwide; she hugs for a prodigious number of hours a day, when she's on task; and people who are eager for one of her hugs line up for literally hours -- maybe even days -- in India's sweltering heat (and elsewhere, when she's on tour), for just...a hug. There was so much buildup about her hugs in the movie, and about her being the human embodiment of divine love, that I really was...set up for a disappointment. They were just...hugs. Nothing more, nothing less. She had a few rules for them, too: women should de-smear themselves of makeup, lest they rub too much off on Amma while hugging, and a couple of other ones that I forget.
But two things really struck me about the experience, as portrayed in the movie (again, forgive me, it's just my opinion; you can have yours). One is that we as a society are WHACKED if we are this desperate for what amounts to unconnected affection at such a low level; and two (minor point) that people who give up everything to go and FOLLOW someone like this are even more embarrassingly whacked on the topic than should be safe to admit. And there were quite a few who were compelled to do so. (For a more sympathetic portrayal of the "Amma Phenomenon" than mine, I would refer you to an article in USA Today, linked here, from July of 2006.)
As relatively empty as the experience nonetheless seemed to me, do you get the big picture on this? Possibly millions of people worldwide feel basic-affection-deprived to literally stand in line for hours to have a stranger with allegedly mystical properties hug them -- none of whose mystical properties are actually the draw of the visit? Just the hug. The irreverent, possibly sacrilegious side of me felt a little like Jay Leno, astonished by Hugh Grant's dalliance with Divine Brown, while he was dating supermodel Elizabeth Hurley: Just how badly DID you want it? Yikes.
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A little closer to home, we can revel in the safer, non-religious, amystical "Free Hugs" campaign, portrayed on YouTube, linked here, which was filmed on the streets of Vancouver, B.C. As one respondent wrote on YouTube, essentially, "hey, I tried to imitate that in my local mall, and they kicked me out!" -- "Is that any way to spread love and compassion in the world?" (Watch the video, linked here, it's totally uplifting and fun. You may even shed an actual tear...)
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We've talked a lot about "healthy sexuality and the combat veteran," and we will continue to talk about that all-but-forgotten, way-too-overlooked, thoroughly neglected topic more in the months to come. But interestingly enough, as much as healthy sexuality and intimacy may be hard for the combat veteran to find/take part in, so too may a far more basic experience - simple human affection.
"Only Connect!" - two such all-important words, from prose or poetry, come flooding back from the days of English literature. But from where? From E.M. Forster's Howards End, published in 1910:
"Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the gray, sober against the fire."
and again:
"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."
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Mark Twain, Amma the Hugging Saint, the Vancouver "Free Hugs" man on downtown Robson, E.M. Forster: the message is the same: simple affection is crucial, nay vital, to life -- only connect. See what you can do today to bridge that gap yourself, help others feel understood and connected, and appreciated. A gift that changes the giver and the recipient...a bridge between human beings. Only connect.
