I thought this week I would write about awareness, prejudice and progressive politics. I had a rather insightful conversation in Milan over the weekend that was going to be my focus. However, instead, I want to tell a story of a story of bravery.

Yesterday, travelling to King’s Cross, I got on the 205 bus from Old Street Station. At one stop, a man got on and leaned against the open door – staring straight ahead through the bus’ front window. The driver couldn’t shut the door and get the bus moving as long as this man was standing there. I heard the man – probably in his early forties – say something to that effect. – that he knew the driver wouldn’t be able to shut the door. People walked passed him to come on the bus. Finally, after nearly everyone was on the bus, he came in and sat down. For whatever reason, I assumed that he had done what he did to keep the driver waiting so that his friend wouldn’t miss the bus. When a man carrying a parcel (filled with cakes, I assumed it was) got on and then our door-stopper followed in after him, I assumed that this parcel-man was his friend.

But soon it became clear that they didn’t know each other.

I was perplexed. Meanwhile, door-stopper man sat down. And my thoughts moved on.

Until the next stop – or it might have been two stops. Door-stopper man got up and did the same thing . He was repeating something to himself as he leaned up against the open bus door. A woman standing next to me must have saw the look of confusion on my face and explained that door-stopper man has autism. He feels unsafe on the bus, and he has a routine he does until he feels safe again.

With this knowledge, I continued watching him. A young woman – probably in her mid-twenties – got up and started talking to him. She was gentle. She was trying to persuade him to sit down. Without looking at her – she was on his right, between him and the bus driver’s compartment – he explained “I’m  okay. I’m autistic. I’m okay. I need to do this (not sure about these last words…but I think that’s what he said). “ She backed off and stood watching him, while he continued to look straight ahead and repeat whatever it was he was repeating.

No one said anything – at least not loudly. The driver just waited.

I asked the woman who had explained his situation to me if the drivers knew him and were familiar with his condition. “Some are, some aren’t.” she said “The ones that know him because this is their regular route don’t say anything. But some of the others, they yell at him. And it just makes it worse for him.” She didn’t say it, but I understood – when the drivers yell at him, he feels more scared and presumably takes a longer time to sit back down.

When he sat down in his seat this time round, I think he said ‘thank you’ to no one in particular – or maybe to the driver or to his fellow passengers – but as I type, I realize I might be making that up. In any event, I got off at the next stop – and he went through the same routine. I got off, but before the driver shut the door I got back on. Before I had hopped off the bus, my eyes had started to tear-up. Something in watching this man touched me deeply.  I was feeling a mixture of emotions. But one feeling stood out to me when I got off the bus and saw him sit back down again – this time he only stood for a very brief period: admiration.

So, I hopped back on the bus and as it moved to go to the next stop, I went over to door-stopper man and said “I think you’re really brave.”

To which he said, without looking at me:  “Thank you.”

I got off at the next stop and walked to my meeting, having to wipe away a few tears that were trickling. By the time I got to where I was going, I had grounded myself and was more than prepared to walk in and go straight into meeting mode – which I did.

The initial discussion I was having was unplanned and with more than just the person I had come to see. When that was over, my colleague and I moved to another part of the building to have our planned meeting. We sat down and I immediately said “Before we do anything, I would just like to share what happened to me on the way here.”

I told him the story. I used the opportunity to think through a bit more why I had so much admiration for the man on the bus. I said to my colleague: “It would be so easy to stay at home under those circumstances or not go out alone. But he’s putting himself out there – taking on the comments, the looks, the shouts that no doubt come when he stops the bus. His response is to explain he is autistic and do what he needs to do. Right on.”

Brave. That man is brave.

My colleague shared my view. Later, I was talking with someone  - a stranger at a bus stop who randomly started talking to me about something she had just seen on a bus.  I must have been looking quite serious, because she struck up the conversation by saying “I’m going to make you laugh” and the went on to tell me something that did make smile.

In return, I agreed with her than London can be full of odd-ball people whose behaviour makes you laugh. Then I suggested London is also full of people who touch your heart. And I told her the story. Before I got to say how brave I thought the man was, she interjected: “Oh, he should stay at home and not be disrupting people like that.” After she said this, I paused before telling her that I think he is brave.

She was a bit shocked by this, and then nodded her head in agreement. She said something, too, but I can’t remember what. Her initial response, though, didn’t surprise me. I was, in fact, very surprised at how when I was on the bus and he was keeping us waiting no one shouted at him. On London public transport, people can be very impatient and intolerant. I’m glad no one shouted.  I’m glad that man is brave enough to get out and about. He has a right to use public transport like anyone else, no? But then you might wonder about the person on the bus who becomes late to pick up their child from school or who is late for work because of door-stopper man. What about their needs?  

Well, looking at this situation from such an angle could make for lively and thought-provoking discussion about conflicting interests and maybe even conflicting rights. We could also probably think about the situation and launch into a discussion about care in the community. But for now, I’m still thinking about that man’s bravery. About the burden he bares. About the freedoms I take for granted. About his strength.  About the patience of the bus-driver and everyone else who just kept quiet while he went through his routine. About the young woman who gently tried to get him to move out of the doorway, in what was presumably a combined gesture of compassion and a desire to get where she was going.

And I’m thinking that in addition to telling him I think he is brave (which I suspect could be construed as patronizing, though that was not my intention), I would have liked to have told him I admired him and thanked him for inspiring me by the way he is living so courageously.

Respect.

Last night, I went to a performance at the Roundhouse: Unprovoked. The play was created through the work of The Forgiveness Project. The play tells the story of the knife-murder of a fifteen-year old girl by an eighteen-year old girl and how it is that the mother (Mary Folely) of the victim has forgiven the girl who killed her daughter. We had the privilege of being joined afterwards by Mary in a Q&A session. Not surprisingly, I think, the Q&A focused equally on understanding Mary’s journey to forgiveness alongside exploring how young people become subsumed by violence and destruction.  Mary, through the Forgiveness Project, is very active in giving talks at prisons, particularly those filled with young offenders. I concluded the evening with two ideas dominating my brainwaves: (1) at the heart of forgiveness is freedom (2) too many people in our society – of all ages - are feeling unheard and unseen and a critical a consequence of this is violence and destruction in big and small forms, directed inwards and outwards.

For this post, I’m going to focus on the first idea. In particular, I’m thinking about it in the context of social change and activism.

To some people, forgiveness is a somehow an act of weakness, a ‘giving in’ to someone who has caused harm to you – a ‘they win’ outcome. In the play, Mary’s character (and she said this herself after the performance) eloquently describes how the anger she felt towards her daughter’s killer, Beatriz, was changing her. She was becoming a type of person her daughter would not have liked and in some ways, she suggests, she was becoming little different from someone who kills – at least in her thoughts. She would consider what could happen to Beatriz in prison – how punishment might be inflicted on the girl. She distanced herself from her children and her husband. The on-going harsh and disconnecting thoughts and behaviours she was experiencing in her self were allowing one death in their family to turn into two.

Alongside Mary’s increasing discomfort with how she was being in her self and in the world, forgiveness popped into her head and heart. The first time it made an appearance, she quickly dismissed it. Then she starting allowing it to hang around a bit longer each time it came. Finally, one day, she embraced it and chose it as an action. She described to us how in doing so, she felt that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.  Now Mary dedicates time and energy to turning her family’s tragedy into a learning tool – into a tool that can hopefully also lift heavy burdens from the lives of others – particularly young people who have committed violent crimes.

I think of Mary and I think courage. Yet, something in our society discourages people from forgiveness; as I’ve already said, some people see it as a weakness. But that isn’t all that is going on in the arguments against forgiveness.

Anger is powerful.

Anger usually tries to steer us away from forgiveness – wanting to protect itself and to grow and thrive, anger must keep forgiveness at bay. Anger heats us up, it can help shift us from feeling like vulnerable victims to empowered protagonists, it energises us. Anger can seem like a strong, reliable, protective friend.

At first glance all this sounds positive – anger as a valuable asset. And it is in this way that anger fuels the day –to-day movement of many social activists.

Anger. ANGER!

Mary chose forgiveness because it helped her to return to feeling whole and to connecting fully with her compassionate humanity.  We briefly touched upon the idea that forgiveness is often made possible because the perpetrator of harm has shown remorse and regret.  What if someone doesn’t even see that they have done anything wrong, let alone show remorse? In such a situation can we forgive?

I ask this, because often we social activists find ourselves in situations where we are angry because we feel we aren’t be heard or respected. We feel that, for example, policymakers are ignoring our needs. It is the sense of injustice that often keeps us going day in and day out and often under rather trying circumstances. We have no one to forgive because no one seems to be taking responsibility for what it is that we feel is harming us. But what we do have is anger, raging inside us. 

Mary is taking an active part in creating social change without anger – and this seems inextricably tied to her choice to forgive.  Her story has me wondering: What role might forgiveness have to play in social activism? Can we be credible and effective if we aren’t driven by anger? What does social activism rooted in compassion look like? 

Mary is a strong, powerful force.  I think of her, and I’m inclined to think that anger can be a valuable and perhaps necessary catalyst for change – it is what fires us up and it is a natural response to injustice – but then we would serve ourselves well to shift anger into another energy, into another type of fuel, one that keeps us more deeply connected with the truth of who we can be as human beings – compassionate and nurturing.  We would do well to be aware, I think, of the ways in which anger can easily become a false friend. 

Forgiveness is intriguing me right now. I feel like it turns conventional approaches to social change on their head. It directs us to find freedom, strength and power by letting go of our anger. It almost feels counterintuitive. 

But then breaking old habits often does feel strange, uncomfortable and wrong – so much so, that we struggle hard to succeed in making the break. And now I’m inclined to ask and consider: what are the habits we have as social changemakers/activists that feel ‘right’ because we are accustomed to them – but actually are doing us a dis-service? In what ways – as was happening to Mary – are our reactions to injustice taking us away from being the people we want to be and creating the society we want to see?

Last week I went on a ten day Vipassana meditation course. You don’t get much of an opportunity to talk with others, so I know very little about most of the people who joined me. Ages ranged, I believe, from eighteen to mid-sixties. Economic backgrounds varied. The course has a policy of no fees, only donations – you pay what you can afford and feel is appropriate. Thus, people with very little money come on the course – I know this because I talked with two people who fit in that category, who had struggled to pay for transport to get to the Centre. The racial and ethnic diversity of my fellow meditators was very mixed (to my delight): British, American, Sri Lankan, Jamaican, Ukranian, Chinese, Irish and others I’m sure. We displayed various shades of skin colour. I mention all this to make it clear that, in writing this post, I’m not referring to a particular set of people based on class, race or ethnicity. My observation is a general one – and my observation is this: we – people – are careless, very careless. And this carelessness is no doubt damaging us on a day-to-day basis.  

What led me to this observation – brought it front of mind during the meditation course? Shoes.

The course site includes a large meditation hall. When you enter that building – the Dhamma Hall – you take off your shoes before going into the main room. You do the same when entering your sleeping quarters. One day, I found myself in the Hall observing the way many people had turned shoes with laces into slip-ons. That is, they stopped tying and untying their shoes and instead flattened out the heel support at the back of the shoe. In many of the shoes I saw, e.g., trainers (sneakers, if you are from the US), this involves cracking the back of the shoe. It is taking a perfectly good shoe and wrecking it.

A few days before attending the course, I had read something about a shoe company that makes bespoke shoes and I think – though I might be mis-remembering this – for every pair they make for paying customers, they create a pair to send to a child living in poverty. This bit of information came to mind, as I looked at all those broken shoes. Outrage bubbled up inside me as I thought about how people around the world would value having a decent pair of shoes and here were all these people ruining their shoes because they could not be bothered to tie and untie them when they entered the hall and their accommodations.

Careless. Totally careless.

We are so accustomed to having our basic needs met that we take them absolutely for granted. We also create waste – those crushed-heel shoes will last a lot less longer, which means new purchases, new shoemaking, new waste. Of course, all this was additionally maddening given where we were – a meditation centre where we were strengthening our capacity to be self-aware.

And I started wondering – what else are we careless about? I say ‘we’ even though I had purposefully brought a pair of clogs to the Centre, knowing my shoes would be regularly coming on and off. While I might not have been careless about my shoes, I’m sure I’m often careless in life - materially, linguistically, emotionally, physically.

We all must be quite careless as we multi-task and rush through our days.

No serious harm was done by people breaking the heels in their shoes and perhaps some people only brought already broken shoes with them for this purpose. Regardless, staring at those broken heel supports, I thought about how carefully someone who owns one pair of shoes will tend to them and value them – do everything they can to keep those shoes in good condition.

Imagine if we all regularly paused to think about what we are doing, and saying, how we are carrying our bodies as we move and sit, the impact of our always trying to do various tasks all at the same time. 

How would our lives change if we were all more careful? This isn’t in opposition to risk-taking – I’m all for taking risks in the form of leaps into the unknown. This is careful in the sense of having awareness of how we are being, doing and impacting on our selves and the world around us – when we are careless who and what are we de-valuing and breaking down? Who and what are we pushing into a state of total disrepair? Who and what are we failing to keep in good condition?

In what ways – for whom and in what activities - can you be more full of care?