Sometimes I forget that being a yoga teacher doesn't mean I have to be passive. A pacifist, yes, of course I am, but it's still important to stand up for what's right in the world. And Amendment One is wrong, and heartbreaking.
On my recent trip to Florida, Kevin and I stopped at a yard-sale on our way to the beach. There was a man there who struck up conversation and asked where we were from. "Asheville, NC" I said. "Oh at least you guys know how to vote on gay rights," he said. Understandably, he had no idea that the Asheville area voted against Amendment One. He assumed all of North Carolina had voted for Amendment One.
And then there was this moment...this moment where I could have engaged this man, stood up for what I believed. I could have let him know that not everyone agrees with him and his bigotry, that it's not appropriate to project your racism on strangers...could have pointed out that we are all in this big energy soup of a world TOGETHER and that over time we have created so many ways of labeling people as other--by their race, religion, their nationality, and their sexual orientation and that there are plenty of people in the world who have their assumed reasons to hate him also.
But I didn't say anything, I walked away flustered and later ashamed. How should I have approached this yogicly? And that's where my inner struggle really lied. To engage this man could have meant a few things--I could have perpetuated this "otherness" I speak of by projecting my own feelings of anger and hatred at him. That's not what I wanted to do. So in that regard, maybe walking away was the best option.
My boyfriend and I had a conversation about the man, and have had many since, as we drove away to the beach. Why did he feel the need to bring up this serious, painful subject so nonchalantly to strangers? Why did he make the assumption that we would agree with him? We thought perhaps that where he is from, in Florida in a highly Catholic and highly Republican area, this hot news topic had become a way to bond with the other people in his community. When we thought about it this way, his politics and the issues which he was taking a stand (issues that I think must have been so removed from his daily life that he could be so nonchalant) were not, for him, efforts to perpetuate this otherness, but to feel aligned with others, to feel that he belonged, a desire we all crave.
But this is what consciousness is about, folks! It's about looking beyond your own needs and desires to how your actions, words, thoughts affect others in the world. Look carefully at the desires to belong and the ways in which you create divisions between yourself and the rest of the world. The best we can do is try to understand each other, to help each other make sense of this scary, big world. Let go of fear, embrace love-that is our only way to overcome the hatred and war in the world.
I'm still not sure what I could have said to the man at the yard-sale that day, but this blog entry is my stand towards what I think is a step in the right direction.
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