There is so much we can learn from little boys and girls if we just observe them play, laugh and cry in their day to day activities. Recently I saw a little boy in a shopping mall with his parents. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he starts running and hugged the left leg of a girl coming from the opposite direction. The girl immediately smiled at seeing this little boy’s smile and innocence, and hugged him back and even lifted him in her arms. The parents looked a little embarrassed at first, but were smiling themselves soon.
A hug is a great gift – one size fits all, and it’s easy to exchange.
With the girl gone, the boy started looking for someone to run towards again. Sensing this, his dad said “Now no more running around, hold my hand and walk like a good boy.”
But before I could look anywhere else, he got his finger free from his father’s grip and starting running again. This time, he crashed into an elderly man who was talking over the phone to somebody, and looked a little tensed or worried.
“Get off me”, he said to the boy, but you know kids, and he held on.
“Leave uncle alone, you are hurting him”, said his father as he tried to take him away from the old man. He said sorry to the old man too, in the meanwhile.
“Ok, I have something here, I will call you later”, said the old man to whoever he was talking to. He then looked at the boy, waved his hand on the boy’s head and smiling at him, said “What is your name?”
Seeing the old man smiling, the boy loosened his grip, shied a little bit, muttered his name (which I couldn’t hear) and then again held his father’s hand and started walking.
Sometimes gestures can do more good than any combination of words coming out of our mouths. It seemed that this boy had a gift of hugs, and he went about distributing them to strangers, spreading smiles all around. The world would be a much better place, if we can also focus a little bit more on gestures of love than on words.
