that we look for the humanity in each other and bear witness to each other and our experiences, rather than beating each other up, nitpicking expressions and chasing each other around to point out things we're upset with them for?
Some of us come here, to a community we feel a part of, to connect and get in touch with a little humanity in the aftermath of a shock.
Yet, I'm finding it a bit re-traumatizing to be here.
Before I go on, let me tell you of some of my experiences in the last day and a half and try to convey something about the state people can be in and what they might need.
I had a catheter in my arm, yesterday, getting my weekly infusion. It wasn't going well, already and the nurse was concerned about continuing because I was having "reactions." I don't like it when she reports "reactions", unless they're truly very serious, because I need these infusions to function and the doc will stop them, if he thinks there's a problem. I've already had a 6 month hiatus due to insurance blocking coverage. We finally got going again a few weeks ago and I really can't bear to have them stopped. So, I was already under a fair bit of stress, when she's checking my pulse and says, "whoa, what just happened?"
It took me a moment to realize that she was ready to stop everything because she thought my system just spiked. My pulse rate had jumped.
I had just read a FB posting talking about explosions at The Finish Line, in town.
I had friends down there. Several of them were close by and actually ran in to help. Many of them are traumatized.
I've been to The Marathon, many a year. My daughter used to go to school 2 blocks away from there. Our beloved central library, the oldest public library in the US, is there.
This is me, in Copley Square in 2011, right next to where all the blood-soaked sidewalks are now, facilitating an Occupy Boston general assembly.
I've lived here since 1989. For years, I lived about 5 blocks away from the bombing site.
I almost asked to do my infusion on another day this week, so that we could go down, because we didn't go last year. I decided I need to keep my routine. (thank goodness.)
The sheer familiarity of everything underneath all the chaos and blood and debris was haunting.
I was immediately caught up in wanting to know how everyone I knew was doing. Some of the communities I'm connected to here created check-in email chains or FB threads. Friends in Italy, Egypt, France, Morocco, Syria, Finland, England, Australia and more wanted to know that I was safe. It was a rather all-consuming process, this massive roll call. There was a lot of tension, waiting to hear that people were safe.
My 13 year old daughter had been in the room when I blurted out to the nurse, "explosions!" It was an unfathomable topic to her. All she could say was, "why would someone bomb people at a marathon?" There are no answers to that question which can satisfy. She has only looked at one photo of a sidewalk spattered with blood and looking abandoned. She's shaking her head at the world we grownups have created.
Then I see someone I know from my local neighborhood and Occupy Boston on the news, covered in blood, holding a tourniquet on someone's leg.
I believe in bearing witness, as many here know. I've done quite a bit of witnessing carnage around the world, particularly for Arab Spring and our Witnessing Revolution series. I've had to do a lot of work not to become inured. To stay open to the overwhelming emotion of it, whilst not losing my grounding. The point to witnessing is to bear the humanity and inhumanity, to empathize and not become numb to it. I've seen people with eyes shot out, limbs missing, mutilated corpses of children. This is what we humans do to each other. We just don't seem to be able to stop. We feel someone slighted us or is blocking our desires or is just "wrong" in some way and we rip them apart. Literally.
It's simply wasn't the same, though, when I was looking at familiar faces and places. It was far more gut-wrenching. A kind of panic set in. My concern for the people I know got intense. I. Really. Needed. To. Hear. That. They. Were. Safe.
And I needed to find ways to restore my sense that I am and will be safe. As much as I can in a crazy, mixed up world where we claim we don't like violence, but our national anthem is celebrating "bombs bursting in air" (seemed like a really inappropriate line to be singing tonight, by the way) and "action" films are wildly popular, the more fight scenes or explosions, the better, and we revere boxers and grown men attacking each other over a ball, and boys post pictures of raping girls on twitter, in some kind of celebration of their manlihood.
I began reaching out to the communities I am connected to, needing to hug or hold hands, even if its virtual. Needing to vent; to roll through all the thoughts and emotions; to have people bear witness of each other.
I have reeled in the last 30 hours from feeling shock, anger, sadness, worry, inspired, despairing and loving. My thoughts have ranged from wondering who did this and why, and conjuring up any crime-solving logic I can, to worrying about whether this will become an excuse for a more cold and brutal police-state, instead of deep soul searching for a different way to respond and help the human race try a different way of being here on this planet, together. (basically, my brain is full of run-on sentences.)
I'm both mad and deeply concerned about the person or people who did this. I want justice, but I want real justice. Restorative justice. I want to be furious, but I also want to know what drove them to this.
My frustration with our culture, our politics, our foreign relations, our world domination, our inability to stop hurting others in the name of our superiority and "envious lifestyle" surges.
I wonder what is best to do for my daughter. She's an introvert. I have to be careful not to overwhelm her with processing. At the same time, I have to be sensitive to that brief moment or moments when she will need to. Sometimes, if I blink I can miss it. Need to stay alert and be particularly available.
I wonder which friends have a smaller support system and need more tending to? Can I make sure I'm tended to while worrying about everyone else?
Did I remember to feed the dog? Brush my teeth?
I'm okay. It's all just flowing through me, at its own pace. Right now that pace is a flurry. Being at home, though, is grounding and calming. So, I stayed home for 24 hours, until I felt I might be ready to take in the social energy.
Then I go grocery shopping.
Tuesday is grocery day. We're in need and it seemed like it would be normalizing to do this routine task.
Nothing is routine in Boston, right now. It's a rippling magma of humanity out there. People are noting each and asking, "how are you?" I watched that simple question lead to tears and sharing and expressions of worry and awe. I overhead one woman asking a man, "did you see the pictures of the little girl with the man standing over her, so protectively? Do you know if she's okay? I hope she's okay." Tears streaming down her face. He's silently nodding in an expression of sympathy, but he's speechless. It seems like he's trying to hold it together. People are touching each other on the shoulder, as they pass in the aisles and their eyes meet.
I broke down into tears when they didn't have an item I get there every week. It wasn't about the item, really. It was about routine. Stability. I needed to have this task be mundane. No glitches. It's funny how it's these dumb little things which set us off. I struggled to keep myself focused enough to complete the shopping. Suddenly, I'm berating myself, "why did I bring a child into this world?" (later, I would remember, because so much of life is still so beautiful and the children carry our visions of what things can become.)
Getting through the checkout line is a gauntlet of emotional outbursts. Are grocery store checkout clerks trained to be social workers? It never occurred to me before, how our grocery store clerks are like the bartenders of our errand life. They must be completely exhausted by the end of the day.
My stepson and his partner came by. They're busy being 20-somethings, with a child on the way and a parenting life to build. I don't see them that often, these days. Today, though, they made sure to come and get/give hugs.
I put away the groceries and went to a "peace sing." A local activist choral group usually has their rehearsals in Back Bay (Finish Line neighborhood) and they are temporarily homeless. The church I'm associated with invited them to use our space and they offered to have a peace song sing-along. It was good to sing. Always good to sing.
At first, I couldn't hear sound coming out of me. It took about 15 minutes to feel full-voiced and have that energy of "praying twice" moving through my body. To be able to hold hands with others and send tones of peace into each other's bodies. I could feel us began to repair the social fabric which those bombs tried to tear asunder.
I had to leave before I was really ready to, because I had promised friends I would attend a silent peace vigil in the Boston Commons. I wanted to be there. To see them. To sit in silence and reclaim our public space. I checked in with other friends, along the way, inviting them. Seeing if they needed anything.
It was so reassuring to see hundreds of people there. It was heartwarming to see familiar faces. Most of the people there had no idea that this was prompted and organized by Occupiers. They did it, spontaneously, without laying claim to it. In the name of peacemaking in community together, it needed to be free of labels and political agendas. And it was.
There were people with flags, people in running clothes, people who were clearly visitors to Boston and people I have seen here since I first moved here. Hugs were abundant. Relief in people's face to be seeing you, in person, not just your pixels on their screens.
There was a group of people standing in a circle singing. Sometimes others joined in. I had mixed feelings about this as they sang, "bombs bursting in air!" and religious songs. Those can be acts of exclusion and make some people uncomfortable. (One of the reasons the vigil was outside was because there had been many calls to gatherings at churches and we know, from experience, that this is not as inclusive as people would like to believe. Many people have painful associations with church. They need to be able to gather in community, too.
Still, others found it comforting and felt that it was a magnetic center for the vigil. I was glad for that and accepted that perspective. It wouldn't be useful, in any way, to hold on to my concerns. I let them go.
Large swaths of cloth had been laid on the ground for people to write sentiments on. (The plan is to give them to the Public Library.) You could see that this was a cathartic act for many. The writing and the reading. People were standing over them, taking in the messages. People writing were solemn, determined, tear-stricken or emanating compassion. The collection of handwriting and colors was a piece of healing art.
As I had arrived late, some folks were already leaving. I got texts from one friend who couldn't stay, because she felt harassed by media. She had had an emotional moment and cried on her partner's shoulder. Several flashes went off at them and three different people with microphones approached her for interviews. She wanted to be left alone in her emotional state and felt disrespected and traumatized. Her partner was walking her home.
We learned via twitter and facebook that others had a similar experience and had left because they didn't feel they could mourn in peace. At a peace vigil. The few encounters I had, the media folk were quite polite and did not at all press, as I shook my head, indicating I did not want to interact with them. Perhaps, they had learned from previous responses to dial it down a bit. I know we're a culture of sensationalism, but it still sends me reeling that "journalists" don't see the humans before the story and find that an emotionally vulnerable moment is a career opportunity for them rather than a time to be careful of a human's fragility.
And that's what it comes down to. We're all a bit fragile. That can mean both tenderness in open wounds and shards sticking out at the cracked edges. It can mean that some of our inner light is pouring forth while bits of our darkness pool on the surface.
Of the images I've seen thus far - and I'm trying not to see very many - one has struck me deeply. It's of a wounded man being pushed away from the blast site in a wheelchair. Both of his lower legs are missing and a long, white, shattered piece of bone is prominently sticking out. These are massively traumatic, incomprehensible wounds. That's not what is most striking, however.
What caught my breath, tangled my gut and opened the floodgates of my tears was this: he was sitting in that chair, conscious. Conscious. His limbs have just been ripped off. Even as I type this, I'm breaking into tears. He was conscious. Well, maybe semi-conscious. I can't imagine. He had to be in the deepest state of shock. I'm guessing they were trying to keep him conscious because that often is key to surviving until the right medical help can be applied.
Those of us who are reaching out to each other, in real and virtual life, we're all a bit like the man in the wheelchair. Whether we were on site, live nearby, have friends there, once lived or visited Boston, have experienced similar traumas before or simply have so much empathy that we can feel it, we're all wounded and semi-conscious, to varying degree.
The ways in which we express ourselves may vary from person to person or, even, moment to moment from the same person. I might need to note that the Marathon was dedicated to the victims of Newtown. I might need to express my worry. I might need to be angry with the world, my government, my culture. I might need express hope and inspiration from all the heroism I've seen and heard of. I might have a moment of deep appreciation for my loved ones. I might need to yell out, "Screw it all!"
What I mostly need - what people processing life need - is for people to see me and engage my humanity before engaging my content. It doesn't matter whether my particular outburst feels like something you agree with or have decided is not appropriate.
So, I ask this community, when you see someone posting, look for what the emotional subtext of their expression might be before debating with them, correcting them, chiding them, HR'ing them, whatever. Acknowledge that if something seems "off" or "harsh" or "inappropriate" that they might be having a moment. Offer a hug. Ask them if they're ok. Let them know you're willing to bear witness.
I've had an urge to come here and to connect. And then I see someone say, "Obama is clueless" and people pounce on him. I feel the lashing at him reflects the dynamics that lead to violence. Who cares if he has an opinion about Obama? Obama doesn't care. He's a political figure. He flicks those gnats off his shoulder, doesn't he? So, why the need to make sure this person gets thirty lashes? Let him have his moment of venting. You can ignore it, if you're not able to say something like, "I hear your frustration. Sending a hug."
In the aftermath of a terrorizing event, people need to vent. This whole "that's inappropriate" line of chat is actually very inappropriate. The only thing I can imagine being inappropriate is blaming the individual, powerless victims. (Fuck the Westboro Baptist Church and their hateful pickets. We'll be standing between them and our families who need to grieve in peace.) Other than that, venting is fair game. It hinders the process of healing, reconciling to limit what can be expressed.
We're in a messed up world. The monied elite own our government and beyond. They are extra-national and answer to no one. Military equipment is produced by private corporations. They sell to anyone. The NRA pushes GUN FREEDOM! for the sake of gun corporation sales. Monsanto is almost single-handedly destroying the ecology of the planet with pesticides and herbicides and GMOs. (how many us think the 98% of bats dying off in PA is going to be related to Monsanto?) We can see the once verdant forests of a large swath of Canada is now a post-apocalyptic landscape after fracking. Yet, our "leaders" are going to approve it here and let that earthblood flow right down the heart of our land. The spills have already begun and that doesn't slow them down for a heartbeat, because Money™.
Our government props up dictators around the world, as long as they let our corporations get access to their natural resources. If they deny our corporations, we declare thme Teh Evil Enemy™ and do everything we can to punish their innocent citizens and incite the people here to support an invasion.
Though there is plenty of food in existence to feed everyone on the planet, we let entire countries suffer from famine unless someone will give our corporations profits to send them food.
We're killing people in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost every day. Our President presides over a kill list where innocent civilians, including children are just so much "collateral."
We're watching an entire indigenous tribe being murdered in Brazil for the sake of a dam.
We know that we can only get shirts at Target for $9.99 because of abusive labor practices in another part of the world. But, "hey, our lifestyle!"
Then we're shocked when what we reap is sowed at home. Whether its a US citizen or not, we are part of a worldwide dynamic which reaps this. Yet, the person we take it out on is the powerless guy who spews a stupid comment about the president? Or notes that there is something sick about humankind? We shun a person, who is clearly crying out in pain? We flog him for having an inappropriate reaction to someone accusing him of a mental disorder, but we support that other person? When he expresses being hurt by that - admitting that his behavior was problematic, too - we pile on? Why he shouldn't feel the way he does is 'splained to him. Over and over. And over. It's like watching a battering. I can't leave him to fend for himself. Yet, I'm also feeling little reserve for watching abuse.
It's not the only example. It happens here all. the. time.
It's painful. It's petty. There are people on the other end of these words. "Hello, I'm a person." If this is how we treat each other, how can we expect the world to become a better place? Betterment can only occur when we start interacting with people as human, emotional beings first.
You don't have to correct every single thing you disagree with on the internet. Perhaps you've heard: you can click away and ignore it.
I'm begging to you reach out to people you've argued with, debated with, chided, HR'd, lectured or insulted. Ask if she's ok? Let him know that you know he's a person. That you may not understand or agree with her sometimes, but you know you need to be kinder about it. Ask him if there is anything you can do to soothe his aching soul. (In this world, there can't be anyone who doesn't have some measure of ache in her soul.)
I've had a special relationship with this community. I've received an enormous amount of support through very challenging and frightening times. The love has come pouring through. Not just viscerally, either. If it weren't for this community paying for needed medical tests, I might not be alive today. My heart belongs here, even when my politics don't.
It is profoundly deep for me, the pain of coming here and seeing people hound one another and lash at each other. Nothing is uglier than shunning. And that's what HRs do. To see someone express feeling hurt and another say, "oh, boo hoo. you deserve it." It's just so ugly, when what the world needs is beauty. I probably won't be able to stay for comments, as I'm not naive enough to think that my plea will stop people from arguing about some detail or another in my storytelling or to defend the righteousness of some of the behaviors I'm dismayed by. I simply don't have the fortitude for it. (I'm sure someone with impervious fortitude will make sure to tell me to just stay out of the kitchen, then. Because, "It's A Political Site™" Though I believe that when politics is more important than treating people with respect and dignity and care, we need to reset our priorities, I know that I will be corrected.)
So, I'm heading offline to sing and dance with my daughter, for a bit. Then I'll do a little knitting before I escape into the final installment of the Wheel of Time.
I wish you all well. I send vast amounts of love and compassion and vision. - Una