Mooventures

I always hear two big themes around this time of year – reflections on the past year, and/or resolutions people are going to make.  As a general practice, I think reflecting is a good exercise. It’s good to go back and remember both the great things and challenges that I have been through.  Resolutions are a bit different for me.  I always hear people “swear” they will stick to them this year and often this is followed by a litany of reasons (ahem, excuses) as to why things didn’t work out the previous year. Making new year’s resolutions has not been something I have ever been in the habit of doing. Occasionally I might, in my mind, think about what I would make as my resolutions, but I don’t actually declare it.  Maybe because I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold to it. It feels a bit like setting yourself up for failure, I suppose.

I don’t want to appear as noncommittal, because that’s actually not true. In fact, I value commitment as a character trait. I think what it really comes down to is: will I be able to fully commit to “X” in the way that I want to? There’s a choice to be made: dabble in a lot of things and spread myself around, or deeply commit to a few things. For me, I’ve discovered the importance of the latter over the last few years. Two of my biggest fears in life are failing, and letting others down. As a result of these inherent fears, I’ve gravitated towards wanting to commit to fewer things instead of having multiple surface interests. Over the last several years, the biggest commitment I have made is to lead a life that is defined by nonviolence. My trip to India and southeast Asia last year was a humbling experience as I was able to see and experience things I couldn’t even imagine until being over there. That trip only reaffirmed my pledge to nonviolence and I can honestly say it is the one thing I am still fully committed to.  Gandhi said, “Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. It’s seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.”

In the spirit of resolutions, I am going to publicly declare some actions I need to work on in order to help further my obligation to nonviolence.  I think it’s important to note that these are directly related to my personal reflections of what turned out to be a challenging 2013 for me.  So I’ve dubbed the term “reso-flections” to capture the idea of resolving to help improve who I am by reflecting on things from this past year. I welcome anyone who would like to join me in any of these reso-flections to please do so.  Most importantly, I’m urging my friends and fellow ahimsakas to hold me accountable to these things. So here they are – in no particular order:

BE MORE PATIENT

“Patience and perseverance, if we have them, overcome mountains of difficulties.” – Gandhi.  I confess that I lose my patience more than I care to admit. Over the past year I have been realizing that being impatient doesn’t ever fix anything – it really just makes me more aggravated. Transitioning from teaching to traveling to returning to grad school has taught me some valuable lessons about patience. Stepping back and remembering that I don’t know what’s going on in a situation or with a person I come in contact with reminds me that I need to exercise patience the same way I hope people will with me.

HAVE MORE COMPASSION

For me, this means being less judgmental and more compassionate. This one is closely connected to being more patient. I am trying to train myself to respond to situations with compassion first – because I would hope that others would respond to me the same way. I love the Plato quote above because it’s so true.  I don’t know the trials others are facing when I meet them, but if I err on the side of compassion I will hopefully not add to that person’s challenges.

CONSISTENTLY LOOK FOR THE POSITIVE

This is one I have recently picked up from a friend of mine. He is constantly pushing what I like to call the ‘positive agenda’ and it is actually a great habit to get into.  I remember I was visiting him in Virginia in August and I was trying to make a decision. He was listing the positives of both options and when he was done I said, “Okay, and the cons are?” His partner said, “No.  He doesn’t do cons. He just focuses on the positives.” I still think about that comment a lot, and recently saw this quote that sums it up well: “Nothing positive will come from being negative, and nothing negative will come from being positive.”

WATCH MY WORDS

There are a lot of elements to this one and I have a future blog post brewing on this. My personal goal is to eliminate cursing – even (especially) in sarcastic ways.  Another element I am working on is choosing my words carefully, realizing that while some words may not be taken literally every time, there are subtle implications in the use of words.  For example, I have become more conscious about not casually using the word ‘hate’ (‘I hate traffic.’), ‘shoot’ (‘Just shoot me a text), and any form of the word ‘kill’ (‘Jon Stewart really killed it on last night’s show.’) Instead, I’m striving to always speak with a language of love, and swapping out the powerful negative words, for richer, more constructive ones. Mother Teresa said, “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

LOVE OTHERS

This is something I definitely am guilty of not doing enough. When I am impatient, lack compassion, or don’t watch my words, I lose my ability to love others the way I should. Love always wins in the end, and that’s the way it should be. I want to be a person who loves others first – before making assumptions or judgments. I am grateful for the friends in my life who consistently model this and they serve as reminders that I need to do it more. I am hopeful that like other things in my life, the more I do it, the better I’ll get at it. 

ALLOW OTHERS TO LOVE ME

This is a really hard one for me and I’m still trying to figure out how to make this happen. I find it infinitely easier to love others as opposed to allowing others to love me.  However, the events from this past April left me in a space where I had to allow others to love me in order to get through it all.  When I reflect back on the first few weeks of the aftermath, I am still struck by the way others loved me. I remember the texts, emails and phone calls, I remember people opening their homes to me so I wouldn’t have to be alone, I remember the meals I shared with friends because they knew I was too distracted to think about eating, and I remember the visits from friends months later who came to check-in on me. But most of all, I remember the immense amount of love I felt. Friends from the other side of the world and the other side of the country were constantly reminding me that I am loved and it was powerful thing when I felt like my back was up against a wall.  While the circumstances that led to this outpouring of love are not ideal, I will forever be thankful for the reminder. It allowed me to see know that it’s okay to let others love me.

BUILD AND INVEST IN A BELOVED COMMUNITY

Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence, named ‘Kingian Nonviolence’ is described in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom.  One of the principles is: “The Beloved Community is the framework for the future.” This nonviolent concept is an overall effort to achieve a reconciled world by raising the level of relationships among people to a height where justice prevails and people attain their full human potential. When I first heard about the Beloved Community, I was immediately attracted to what it stands for. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ‘beloved’ is defined as “dearly loved or dear to the heart” and ‘community’ defined as “a unified body of individuals”.  If you put those definitions together, I think it becomes a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. really wanted: a dearly loved unified body of individuals.  There is a quote from the book Freedom Song, by Mary King, that I think does a nice job of describing what Beloved community could look like: “What sustained us from day to day was an intense feeling of interdependency – the sense that we had only one another to rely on – and a spirit of comradeship.” I also think of this Mother Teresa quote:

I am striving to build this Beloved community and I hope you will join me.

So there you have it – my reso-flections at the dusk of 2013 and the dawn of 2014. I am grateful for all that the past year has taught me and looking forward to the adventures that lie ahead. Thanks for joining me on the journey – it’s been a much richer experience being able to share it with you. I’m wishing all of you health, happiness, love, and peace in the New Year!

Dear Ms. Moo,
I was wondering if you are going to make any more posts. I really enjoy reading them because they are very informing and comforting. I think Nelson Mandela would be a good topic because I know that he wanted peace but I don’t know much else. I hope to hear from you soon!

When I received this email, I realized I had never taken the time to write about the passing of Nelson Mandela. It also was a good reminder that there are people reading my blog and I should be better about posting. So big thanks to the friend who sent me the email – I needed some motivation! 🙂

One of the reasons why I didn’t write about Nelson Mandela closer to when he died, was because the impact it had on me was profound. I have been a longtime admirer of his, and for me he was one of the last living ahimsakas in our world. But I am glad to hear you’re interested in learning more. There is so much to tell about Nelson Mandela and his life, I’m not entirely sure where to start.  If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know I always enjoy talking about Gandhi and his life.  I thought I would share about Gandhi’s time in South Africa and how his commitment to nonviolence was established while there, as well as how part of Mandela’s legacy was rooted in work Gandhi had accomplished while he was in South Africa.

Gandhi in South Africa

At age 23, Gandhi left India and traveled to South Africa, hoping to earn a little bit of money and to learn more about being a lawyer.

Only one week after he arrived, he was asked to go on a long journey that included transportation by train and stagecoach. When Gandhi boarded the first train of this journey, railroad officials told him that he needed to transfer to the third-class passenger car.  When Gandhi, who was holding first-class passenger tickets, refused to move, a policeman came and threw him off the train. That was not the last of the injustices Gandhi suffered on this trip.  As Gandhi talked to other Indians in South Africa (derogatorily called “coolies”), he found that his experiences were not isolated incidents but rather, these types of situations were common. During that first night of his trip, sitting in the cold of the railroad station after being thrown off the train, Gandhi contemplated whether he should go back home to India or to fight the discrimination.  After much though, Gandhi decided that he could not let these injustices continue and that he was going to fight against the discrimination. Gandhi spent the next 20 years working to better Indians’ rights in South Africa.

Birth of Satyagraha

It was during his time in South Africa that Gandhi founded the phrase ‘satyagraha’, which means ‘soul force’.  Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha is both a personal and social struggle to realize the Truth, which he identified as God, the Absolute Morality.  Gandhi sought this Truth, not in isolation, self-centeredly, but with the people. He said, “I want to find God, and because I want to find God, I have to find God along with other people. I don’t believe I can find God alone.  If I did, I would be running to the Himalayas to find God in some cave there. But since I believe that nobody can find God alone, I have to work with people. I have to take them with me. Alone I can’t come to Him.”

In practice, satyagraha was a focused and forceful nonviolent resistance to a particular injustice.  A satyagrahi (a person using satyagraha) would resist the injustice by refusing to follow an unjust law.  In doing so, he would not be angry, would put up freely with physical assaults to his person and the confiscation of his property, and would not use foul language to smear his opponent.  A practitioner of satyagraha also would never take advantage of an opponent’s problems.  The goal was not for there to be a winner and loser of the battle, but rather, that all would eventually see and understand the “truth” and agree to rescind the unjust law.

Gandhi’s 20 years in South Africa helping fight discrimination was foundational in his development of satyagraha, which would later help lead India to its independence.

Mandela in South Africa: The prisoner who became president

Mandela grew up in South Africa during apartheid (in the language Afrikaans, the word apartheid means ‘the state of being apart’), which was a social system in South Africa that forced white and non-white people to live in separate areas.  Non-white people meant black people, people from Asia and people of mixed race.  A white and a black person could not marry.  Black and white people could not share a table in a restaurant or sit together on a bus.  Black children and white children went to different schools, and sports teams were all-white or all-black, never mixed. When Mandela was growing up, black people had little say in how South Africa was run. The government was whites-only.  Most black people were poor and worked as servants – they worked on farms and in factories and gold mines.

In 1944, Nelson Mandela joined the African National Congress, or ANC.  The ANC wanted black South Africans to have the same human rights as whites.  Mandela led young people in the ANC.

Many white people, as well as black people, spoke out against apartheid.  Mandela admired Gandhi, who had used peaceful protest in India.  Mandela thought that perhaps peaceful protest could get rid of apartheid, without fighting.  Speaking out was dangerous though – in 1956, Mandela and 155 other people were arrested for treason. (Treason means attempting to overthrow the government of one’s country.) After a trial lasting five years, he was set free in 1961.

In 1960, people held a demonstration against apartheid at Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, and the police shot dead 69 black people.  The government blamed the ANC and banned them from existing. As a result, Mandela had to hide and use disguises since he was being hunted by the police. Meanwhile, millions of people in other countries supported the anti-apartheid movement.  Many nations stopped trade with South Africa, and sports teams and entertainers refused to go there. But the government still refused to change.

In 1962, Nelson Mandela was arrested again and accused of plotting to overthrow the government.  In 1964,  he was given a life sentence in prison.Mandela was sent to prison on Robben Island, along with other ANC leaders.  He spent a total of 27 years in prison, and was allowed one visitor every 6 months.

Mandela became the most famous prisoner in the world.  He did not give up – even the prison guards admired him.  From around the world, the calls got louder: Free Nelson Mandela!

In 1990, South Africa’s new president FW de Klerk set Nelson Mandela free.

One of most amazing things about Mandela was his ability to keep fighting for what he knew was right, despite his circumstances. Even after being imprisoned for 27 years, he was able to walk away with and not look back. One of my favorite quotes is this one, which I believe speaks to the power of forgiveness:

Mandela and de Klerk agreed: no more fighting. Mandela called on all South Africans to work together in peace.

In 1991, Mandela became leader of the ANC.

In the 1994 elections, all black people in South Africa were able to vote for the first time, and the ANC won the election.  

A new government took over and in May 1994, Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president – he was 75 years old. Among many of the things he accomplished while in office, he is credited with helping the country of South Africa become a multiracial democracy.

Gandhi and Mandela

Gandhi has been called “the liberator of India in South Africa” and is also seen as a founding father of Mandela’s South Africa of equal rights for all people.  Gandhi and Mandela came to a shared conviction that all suppressed people, whatever their differences of religion or ethnicity or caste, must stand together against their oppressors and, in Gandhi’s words, “cease to play the part of the ruled.”  Only a changed mindset could change the structure of white, colonial power.  Mandela many time referenced Gandhi as his biggest inspiration and he considered him his role model.  Nelson Mandela has been compared to the Father of the Nation of India by many historians and experts. There are striking similarities between both  great leaders that brought them international repute and followers.  The path of nonviolence trekked by them to free their country of slavery and dominance raised them to the same pedestal.

In a recent article on fansofindia.com, (click here for the full text), the author does a nice job of showing ways in which Gandhi inspired Mandela. Here are some highlights:

• Both Gandhi and Mandela are considered world leaders for their undying efforts towards the liberation of their country and bringing justice to the countless fellow countrymen.  Neither of them sought violence for achieveing the freedom of their land. Their morals were high and clear-cut about fighting for the nation in a dignified and nonviolent manner.
• Mandela is referred to as a true Gandhian by the Indian democrats and diplomats.  He is famous as one of the heirs of the Gandhian ideology of nonviolence and struggle for human rights.  They both spent a lot of time in the same prison in Johannesburg, Fort Prison.  Morever, Gandhi lived in South Africa from 1893 to 1914 and was also a victim of racial hatred while traveling in the country.  Gandhi and Mandela were both lawyers and Mandela went on to establish the first black law firm in South Africa.
• Gandhi had always believed that there would be someone in South Africa to take up the cause of the blacks and work towards the freedom of the country from oppression.  Social and political injustice would be shunned by the masses and the land would be free.  On receiving the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, Mandela spoke profoundly of Mahatma Gandhi and how his teachings helped South Africa overcome Apartheid.
• Both these leaders are respectively hailed as the Father of the Nation in their countries.  They are loved and respected across the masses and ages.  They are paid homage by the international community for sacrificing their lives for their country and taking the cause of humanity to different corners of the globe.

Both Gandhi & Mandela demonstrated to the world they could build inclusive societies, in which all Indians and South Africans would have a stake and whose strength, they argued, was a guarantee against disunity.  They both left legacies behind that we can learn from.  For me, the most striking thing is how they both walked a long road to freedom, and all the while stayed committed to nonviolence. I hope my fellow ahimsakas will join me in continuing to learn from these two great leaders as we strive to make the world more peaceful.