I want to hold your hand.
[No. 39]
WHY DO YOU THINK, AS A WHOLE, WE HUMANS TEND TO ORGANIZE OUR SOCIETIES IN SUCH WAYS THAT WE HURT EACH OTHER OVER AND OVER AGAIN?
Our challenge is to find the compassion for others that we want them to have for us.
Sally Kohn
Bhutan’s four pillars of Gross National Happiness center on good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, cultural preservation, and environmental conservation; these beliefs guide their society towards well-being and sustainability.
Child at Tamshing Phala Festival (Bumthang, Bhutan)
The first thing our guide Namgay told us when we landed was this. The second was that in Bhutan, it is impolite to point. The local custom instead is to gesture at something with an open palm. I began to register this new way of drawing attention to something or someone. I would catch myself as I flipped and opened my hand, gesturing towards one exquisite stupa [Buddhist shrine] after the next.
Days after my return, as war broke out in the Middle East, I began to think about your question. Why do we humans tend to organize our societies in such ways that we hurt each other over and over again?
Why do governments point fingers when they could be welcoming resolutions? How and why do we as citizens become complicit? The West, for one, has woven a long and tortured thread.
“We have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals.”
Audre Lorde
The thing is, our liberation is so tied up in each other. If a society’s seeming success is built on gain over goodness, humans will clammer their way to the top, vying to survive in a system set up to divide. Capitalism and white supremacy are constructed to stratify. I feel called to look at alternative models, like Bhutan, that have organized around more utopian principles and practices. We must look for models around us and also imagine the ones that are more beautiful than anything we have ever seen. We must welcome in these visions, together.
Why not hold a bowl with your hand to welcome in another, rather than pointing someone out? Try the two gestures, and I dare you not to feel the change in your energy. I believe our societies will change when we are individually and collectively brave enough to sit with why that is. Inner peace will build global peace. This vulnerability, this willingness to be present, can begin with something as small and thoughtful as an honest, open mind or a quiet, open hand. As in, I am open to seeing you. As in, look at us. This is the divine feminine in every person. The bowl. The cup. This is the thing we must sculpt. If we build it, peace will come.