Though I like to think of myself as a grumpy old curmudgeon, bored silly by life’s constant disappointments, the truth is that I have a deep well of earnestness running through my core, deep enough to sometimes leave me flattened by something as simple as my cat’s little head bumping against my leg while I’m working.

I say all this I guess as a sort of preface, because I had a bit of an experience today that seems, well, sort of hippie-dippy, or, if you’re from around here, very Sedona. The thing is, I went to a yoga class today–for the first time in many, many years–and at the end of class, the instructor hugged me. It wasn’t just me, of course; she hugged everyone. But she doled out the hugs with an understated gentleness that had some meaning, at least for me, isolated as I am here in rural nowhere, Arizona. I left the class feeling like a chunk of sun had been lodged in my chest–maybe it was the hug, maybe it was the class, maybe it was the sweat and strain of a good workout.

I don’t know.

But it felt good.