Hug a Porcupine Today

The porcupine is the animal I believe best represents relationships.  During the winter animals die from the cold unless they huddle together for warmth.  They pile together and breathe in the heat of each other. By staying close together they protect one another and stay warm in the deepest cold.
But a porcupine has sharp and painful quills that can easily damage another standing nearby.  With each movement or shift there is a chance that wounds will be opened.  But moving away from each other would mean a loss of the warmth and protection that they desire. So they stay and prick each other.  They live with the small wounds that a close relationship can cause and together they survive.

This is not a commentary on love relationships or family relationships, it is all relationships.  In every relationship that you start, there exist always the small wounds of being near someone else. With family sometimes those small pricks are much deeper, more painful, and occasionally slower to heal. But those are also the ones that we will give more time to heal and have more hope that the wounds won’t be inflicted.
Friendships are the more dangerous.  With a friendship, if a wound is unintentionally deep it may never heal and the friendship is over. Sadly, sometimes friendships end even if the quill belongs to another. A deep friendship though will not only survive those pricks but will be even stronger for it.

Nothing has happened and I am not in any way feeling pricked by anybody, I was just planning a Random Acts of Kindness Month for my school and was considering kindness deeply.  In doing so it brought me to relationships and I wanted to say to those of you whom I may have pricked, however deeply,  that I am sorry for the wounds I have given you.  Though I don’t wish to dwell on past wrongs, it is in my nature to look backwards and regret the harms I have done. Even when they have been unintentional, or can be blamed on stupidity and misinformation, I am sorry for the wrongs I have done.

I intend to embrace this month theme and see if I can’t do a turn of good for every poor decision I have made.  I already volunteer my time at the Animal Welfare Centre, a no kill shelter in Ras Al Khaimah that is working hard to be a shining example to this part of the world.  Doing this with my family has become something truly special that I look forward to even on days that it seems like a chore.  Truth be told even on days when I am worn out from work and tired and drained, walking those dogs around and knowing that I am making a difference in their lives is refreshing.  Seeing the kids taking on the task as a measure of social responsibility fills me with pride and joy.

So now I am thinking that if porcupines could hug, their quills wouldn’t get in the way, would they?  Time for me to hug the world.  I just bet it will hug me back. Wanna hug?