So here’s a question for you: have you ever been in a supermarket, and some other person accidentally bumped into you? If so, how did they react? And how did you react?
While I have never done an official study, my empirical data shows that most people are apologetic and even a little ashamed for having “crossed the line” and touched another human being, simply as a default. The implication is, we are not supposed to touch other people, and if we do, it is a violation, sort of like hitting their car with our car. “You crossed my boundaries. Shame on you.”
This default prohibition against touching each other goes against our natural instincts. As children we immediately want to touch everything. Museums for kids always emphasize the “hands on” aspect of the exhibits. Kids just naturally want to touch and be touched. Babies who are not touched enough tend to have poor health. There is a series of articles on this in Psychology Today:
It is fascinating to read some of the science about baby and child development and how touching and being touched nurtures that sort of thing.
Now I will confess to you that once upon a time I was a somewhat anti-touch person. I had no experience of literacy in how to do it properly. It was “art” that turned this around.
The first place this happened was simply in taking up a musical instrument. Granted, a string bass is not a human being, but any “craft” that requires a great deal of handling or touching something is going to serve to stimulate the growth of brain cells that are tied to developing fine skills in your hands. Of course, skills that involve use of your hands are generally going to pay less money than skills that are almost all in your head, so there is always that incentive to steer kids away from “working with their hands.” And yes, the “knowledge workers” will always make more money, but people who work largely with abstract concepts and numbers all day usually lack that sense of calm certainty and connection that a good carpenter always seems to have.
But the big shift in my life from a touch starvation diet to touch gluttony was when I took up swing dancing. I confess, in the first few months of dance lessons I was completely lost. I finally had to take a private lesson where the teacher had to explain to me that yes, it was all right, yes, even desirable, that I should touch this other person.
In the dance community, we often discuss and laugh about the “addiction” we suffer from; once you get used to having a lot of safe physical contact with other primates, you wonder how you ever lived without it.
I used to work in healthcare, and one hospital client prided itself on being a “high touch” environment. Good for them, although that is nothing compared to most “alternative” healthcare providers who, at their core, are almost always about a great deal of being touched by the health practitioner. The healing is in their hands. Being touched is as essential to our health as any vitamin.
Artistic endeavors are all about form and structure, not just about the form of limerick or a rondo, but also about giving a framework in which we have collective permission to “express” our human selves, including the need to “express” our need to touch and be touched by others of our species. Art, either the art of hands-on healers, or the art of social dance form, gives us a very safe place to do that.
There are some places where the need to touch is dealt with by prohibition– in many public schools, for example, it is verboten for a teacher to touch any of their students. The presumption that all touching is based on some evil intent comes from people who are damaged by past abuses. Their perceptions are skewed. There is always an abstract theorist somewhere who has a plan to make things more efficient by simply making a rule that we must suppress our complex humanity. These things always looks good on paper but it’s never a good idea to go against Mother Nature.
The arts serve to give us a collectively accepted set of rules with which we can let ourselves touch and be touched. Without such structure, we default to unhealthy states of disconnection and fear.
And by the way, while I used to panic when someone inadvertently backed into me at a supermarket, now I just gently lead them out and away like I would any dance partner. So much better. They are so stunned to be immediately accepted, forgiven, and gently handled, that I never get any complaints.
© Justin Locke
