A reflection from the Women’s March on Washington
There was a brief moment that will always remind me of all that I want to remember from the weekend of the Trump Inauguration and the Women’s March in Washington. It was on Saturday, as the first speakers were taking their turns on the podium. Crowds of people were still coalescing. The density of the crowd was something I’ve hardly ever experienced. Once on the streets of Varanasi in India, once on a subway platform in New York.
We’d walked about a mile with a growing crowd of people pouring out of subways stations and dozens of streets. Mostly women, some men. Gray hair and babes in arms. Wheel chairs and skateboards. Every ethnic group. And every color in clothing and posters, although pink did predominate. A fast paced crowd but not like rush hour commuters. Easy conversations with total strangers all along the way. Some starting with posters and slogans. So much art!
As people from all directions converged, things slowed down. The density of the crowd increased. A few people climbed trees, streetlights and the walls of the museum nearby. Most of us gradually filled whatever openings showed up around us.
We had no idea how far the crowds extended on all sides. Technical communications broke down as cell networks overloaded and speakers couldn’t carry sound from the podium a block away. We just stood, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. Sometimes I’d lean against someone next to me and they’d lean back. ‘Donkey-donkey,’ like burros climbing mountain trails.
Then we heard a siren and word rippled thru the crowd: An ambulance needed to get thru. My first thought: That’ll never happen. There was confusion, not knowing where the ambulance was or where it was trying to go. Scary sense of urgency. Gradually, word of mouth messages passed one to one and people tried to respond. But there was no where to go. There was a collective up take of breath and I think we all got a little taller. Still no room for a vehicle.
I don’t know how but somehow the crowd parted a way for the vehicle to move thru. What I do know is my feet were not quite on the ground when it happened. I was lifted off my feet as the multi-headed creature we’d become shape shifted to make space where there was none.
Much coalesced in that moment. Including my clarity that we are not just stronger together. We are ONLY strong together.
As I caught my breath after the panic of feeling out of control, what flooded my being was gratitude for the safety and protection that came from being in such connection. Close in, nearly parallel lines with all the beings around me. We were ALL incredibly vulnerable in that moment. And, miraculously perhaps, we stayed upright and supported each other – literally!
In the wake of the ambulance, as we settled out into more independent personal spaces, eye contact showed up differently. You know those knowing sparks that come only with intimacy? That’s what I’m talking about. Brief. A little sheepish. Wide eyed. Startled. And right there for it. Awkward laughter. Frightening, yes. And coming thru it together was so different from experiencing fright all alone.
This is at the core of this juncture for me. What we seem to have lost is our sense of being united in all the states that make up the American experience.
We rarely find ourselves in such an eye-to-eye, hip to hip dance of being vulnerable together. We’re such a big country. So much space between so many of us. We can find ourselves isolated from others in whatever experiences reveal our vulnerability. And when we miss the opportunity to notice we are ALL vulnerable, we miss the opportunity for mutual support in our ungrounded and out of control moments.
Until we acknowledge the universality of vulnerability, I don’t think we can cross our divides. If we don’t get that being vulnerability is an essential part of life, we’ll just stay lost to ourselves and each other. I say we need to reclaim the connection between vulnerability and sacredness. This shows up in pretty much every spiritual tradition. Although the Biblical theme of ‘Strength made perfect in weakness,’ shows up missing in some strains of modern Christianity.
It is tempting to wish vulnerability were not part of life. We wish we could avoid the fright, insecurity and pain that comes with it. In the short term, we can manage to deny it, although this might require imagining someone or something ‘Out There’ is entirely responsible so separating from – or destroying – it or them is the only way to secure ourselves. That only goes so far.
Like it or not, vulnerability is built into our design. Life can’t be created without it. Literally.
Women tend to get this in a way men sometimes don’t. Sometimes due to our experience with Small Ones. And maybe because of our different experiences of intimacy. Satisfying sexuality involves a brief loss of control for both women and men. But the fact is, we tend to experience this in a deeper and more unmistakably vulnerable place. It maybe easier for men to imagine they can control things in and around them to minimize or eliminate their vulnerability. Not so easy for us.
The reason you can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable is that recognizing and dealing with vulnerability in others is how we learn to deal with our own vulnerability – without which we can never be whole. We can’t mature, as individuals or as a society, without clarifying what we can control and what we can’t. Some limits we grow out of, some are inappropriate to push past and doing so only causes injury to ourself or others.
The ever changing balance between control and what we don’t control is the diciest one we humans have to manage. In Asian healing arts, we say this is the role of the Heart. Like a supreme emperor, the Heart is in charge of what we control ourselves, and where we surrender to the power of the Divine. This is a key concept in holistic approaches to healing. Like the serenity prayer in the journey of addictions recovery.
Only with Divine connection can we know when to accept what we can’t control and when to control what we can’t accept. Asian elders would say our capacity for control is empowered by accepting our divine mandate. By definition this is humanly impossible – as individuals. It takes partnership. Whatever we each call Divine, we all see it as larger than any one of us. Most would say it includes all of creation.
What I experienced in the crowd yesterday about control/no control will stay with me. It will inspire the framework for what I see as possible going forward. When I feel more vulnerable than I can manage, I‘ll remember coming together in that crowd.
In the meantime, I’ll be looking for ways to keep in touch.
Cynthia Zanti Jabs, L.Ac., has practiced Acupuncture and Medical Qi Gong for two decades. She can be reached at her Ruscombe Mansion office by calling 443-226- 6626