Lean in, with eagerness. (Honouring Martin Luther King Jr.)

When I look back on my life and the people who have inspired me, Martin Luther King Jr. stands out as one of my biggest inspirations and greatest hero. I like to take time out on every Martin Luther King day to reflect on his many teachings.  Dr. King can be admired for many reasons; best known as a tremendous leader in the civil rights movement, and an incredibly eloquent orator, King was also a great teacher of non-violence, for he was determined that civil rights must be won through audacious hope, dogged determination, unfailing persistence and always, peaceful protest.  Inspired by Mahatma Ghandi, the principles of nonviolence were fundamental to the movement, and still today lend important lessons to grassroots organizers everywhere.

One of Dr. King’s greatest teachings was that “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”  - that injustice does not only have only one victim but indirectly impacts entire societies, entire nations, even the planet itself; injustice of any kind justifies violence of all types.

A friend of mine shared this Dr. King quote with me today:

All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that
somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a
single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all
indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be
until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to
be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure
of reality.

I read in the paper today that a Scarborough woman died in the snow last night. It was one of the coldest days of the year.  She was a 66 year old woman who had dementia. She wandered outside, not dressed for the cold, died of hypothermia in a snowbank in her residential neighbourhood.  Neighbours heard her cry for help but didn’t call 911. They rationalized their behaviour by explaining that they lived in a dangerous neighbourhood and didn’t want to get involved in anyone else’s affairs.  Upon reading this I recalled my Sociology 101 textbook, with stories about Kitty Genovese and explanations for such peculiar behaviour - the bystander effect and the diffusion of responsibility.  There are explanations for this kind of absurd-sounding behaviour, but how tragic it is that sometimes even caring and compassionate human beings can let fears or insecurities get in the way of helping another person.

Martin Luther King’s quote, above, reminds us that we are all connected. When we draw away from, instead of towards, the pain of another human being, we alienate ourselves from our own innate humanness, from a profound connection with ourselves and others.  In When Things Fall Apart and The Places that Scare You, Pema Chodren explores why we attempt to cover up our feelings with distractions, drugs or noise of any kind. Feeling another human being’s pain can be frightening, and it may frighten us for different reasons. It may remind us with our own pain, feelings of worthlessness, or other feelings we try to bury. But getting in touch with our own pain, opening up to another’s pain, and opening to that compassion that is at the root of our humanness, connects us with the very essence of who we are.

I recently completed suicide intervention training, and one of our instructors taught us to lean in, eagerly to help the suicidal person. Many people are afraid to ask someone if he or she is suicidal, for fear of what the answer will be.  We might be afraid that we cannot help, that we will say or do the wrong thing,or  that we will make things even worse, so we stay quiet and don’t ask, missing out on an opportunity to help someone and perhaps even save a life. One of the take-home messages of the training was, you don’t have to do it perfectly. Just ask. And then listen.

And so, my final thoughts for Martin Luther King Jr. day is that we cannot forsake our humanness, out of fear. We must lean in, with eagerness, with compassion, to help others, to fight for human rights.  Whether we feel we are protected, safe, privileged, loved, rich, whether we have all of our rights and needs met or whether we have none of these things, we must continually look towards the presence of fear or judgement to share our compassion with the world.

A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

- Albert Einstein