Courage, Political Action, and Interconnection as Generosity

The last thing I want to say about generosity, for now, is that one of the most important acts of generosity that I know I can take, is to stand up for, and stand beside, anyone and everyone who could use my support.

 To do this, I know I have to not “other” anyone. Instead, I have to remember that we are not separate. And then, I have to see my very life as a courageous, political act,

The act of intentionally, courageously, standing up for, and standing beside.

 This is not easy for me. I admire you if this is easy for you. I want to do better with the generosity of courage, political action, and interconnection.

Transcript

Wake Up Call #360: Courage, Political Action, and Interconnection as Generosity

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 360. We’re still working with generosity, the first Paramita. It’s really interesting to me how many ways there are to understand generosity. Today let’s look at the generosity of courage, political activism, and interconnection. I like that today is Wake Up Call 360 because in a way, these three forms of generosity are an invitation to take a three hundred and sixty degree view.

To me, the generosity of courage, political activism, and interconnection are about supporting people who deserve our support. When I say, “people who deserve our support, I mean anyone who is marginalized in (or by) society, and I’ll try for a better definition in a minute; and when I say, “our” support, I mean the support of those of us with privilege. 

In a way, all of us here have a certain kind of privilege, in the sense that we’re highly educated. We have privilege because we understand how things work, and specifically, how the law works. Which is a huge window into understanding how the world works, and how systems that influence, and oppress, work. 

If we’re practicing law, we’re also privileged because we have a solid way of earning a living. Maybe not an easy way, or a simple way, but a solid way. 

Our education also affords us greater access than we’d have without it, whether that’s literal access because we can represent someone or an institution or a group trying to dismantle an institution, or whether that’s perceived access as in, “Oh, she’s a lawyer so she must be smart. Let’s give her a seat at the table.”

And because of that access, we also have the privilege of being able to influence other people, institutions, governments. Having a law degree or being a member of the bar doesn’t de facto confer that influence upon us. But if we want it, we probably can get it, or at least we can get it more easily than a non-lawyer can.

So that’s the “our,” when I’m saying, courage, political activism, and interconnection can form a kind of triumvirate of generosity towards people who deserve “our” support. Those who need support, are all marginalized people. Meaning, anyone who, for any reason, whether because of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, immigration status, ability, body size or type, or even something as seemingly benign as the schools they attended, or who is marginalized for any reason, whether or not they identify as having or embodying that “reason,” and who is therefore at risk for suffering from, or actually suffers from, bias, prejudice, or any form of aversion or injustice. 

I’m going to start with the last of these three kinds of generosity: the generosity of interconnection. To me this is like so much of mindfulness: very simple and not so easy. Our default in 2022, given the world as it is, and also maybe our DNA default, is to be tribal, family-oriented, “self”-centered mammals. In my life I share an affinity for those who share my hometown; my schools; my religion; my political views; my gender; and various other identities and social locations. And I am guilty – maybe as guilty as most of us, or maybe more so – of seeing everyone else as “other.” I’ve mentioned here on the Wake Up Call that in my family of origin, everyone was either Jewish, or not-Jewish (with a hyphen). One was the “in” crowd, who could be my friends and whose houses we visited and which included the boys I was allowed to date.  The other was just, other. Enough said, is what my father would have said or actually, didn’t even have to say.

Interconnection is completely different from that. The opposite of that. It’s the understanding, the felt sense, the verified, personal, truth – and each of us has to verify this for ourselves – that as humans, as mammals, as earthlings, we are all, completely, irrevocably, interconnected. My flat tire affects everyone on the road and everyone they were trying to meet and everyone they are in relationship with, all the way to the last of the almost-eight billion of us, not even counting the non-humans. The air I breathe out, you breathe in (it’s ok, I just tested, I’m negative).

The generosity of interconnection is remembering this. Yesterday it took me an hour to get through to DHL and the person I finally got on the line was in a phone center in Manila. And, they are my sibling. The person down the hall from me, or across the table, or who once sat in a courtroom with me – in any of the chairs – is also my sibling. My favorite sibling, in those moments. Can we be as generous to these siblings we’ve never met, may never meet, may never share a tribe or culture or heritage or skin color or affinity of any kind, as we are with our favorite person in the world, from this recollection that we’re all, irrevocably, interconnected? Because it isn’t a discovery, it’s a recollection. “Sati,” the Pali word for mindfulness: to recollect – to recollect the present moment, and to recollect that we belong to one another. To recollect that this is not news.

The generosity of political action, then, for me is about political action that remembers interconnection in the moment. It could also be big political action, but staying small (but mighty), I invite you (and I invite myself) to imagine the personal, day to day, moment to moment generosity of political action as standing up for someone who doesn’t feel comfortable, or isn’t safe, standing up for themselves. Advocating for partnership for a person of color, hiring someone who is transgender, saying something (with kindness, but with seriousness) when your kids (or mine) start disparaging someone – in the privacy of our family room – because of their body size.  

The generosity of courage takes interconnection and political action to the next level. To me, the generosity of courage is not just standing up for someone, but standing beside them. Saying, out loud, this is my sibling, I stand beside her. Or him. Or them. They are my people, they are my beloved, they are my responsibility. I stand beside them, and I want you to know that anything you have to say to them, or about them, you are also saying to me, or about me. Yesterday my daughter went with a classmate to be her support person at an academic hearing for a friend on probation because of faltering mental health but at some personal risk for being identified as supporting this person. I’m proud of my daughter for many things but yesterday, in this moment, sits at the top of the heap: the generosity of having the courage to be the person who stands beside, and says out loud, I acknowledge we are connected. As a small but mighty political act, to say to others, this person is my sibling. We are both earthlings. We are all earthlings. Or in the parlance of my family of origin, we are all Jewish. 

Let’s sit. 

[Play the John Lennon Imagine video at the end of the Paramitas – whenever that is! (It’s bookmarked under Music.)]

Here’s a radical question:

What if we all stopped rushing, stressing, and being so grumpy, 

And made it a point, instead, to just be nice, all the time?

What is we offered a joyful hello in the morning, and a kind goodbye at night?

What if, as Pablo Neruda said,

We were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and 

For once could do nothing?

Nothing but be kind to one another?

Maybe that would be the most generous thing of all…