A Civil Hug

I am spending today in a hotel lobby, greeting guests as they arrive for the meeting I am managing this week. This a busy hotel, located downtown in a major U.S. city. Families are here on vacation and there are also business people everywhere, checking in, checking out, passing through the lobby on their way to their room or a meeting room or the restaurant.

I just saw a tall black man hug a shorter white man and it hit me that I’m in the South and once upon a time, in this exact spot, this would not have happened. And here, in this bustling hotel lobby, a 40-something woman, me, witnessed something pretty darn cool. Something that goes on every day, hopefully, probably unnoticed. But how great to notice -- to witness where we’re at, knowing where we’ve been, and seeing a little boy run around this vast hotel lobby, wondering where we’re going.