Nonviolence asks you: Do you want to create a world free of coercion, a world that works for everyone, and where everyone only does what they are fully able and willing to do?
One of the things I find so inspiring about nonviolence is how much it highlights a human capacity that I imagine many would agree with being a potent and unique human capacity: Our capacity to choose freely within certain boundary conditions and act beyond particular, rigid script that was implanted in us through our genetic setup. Like no other species on planet earth we have the capacity to choose from a wide range of options in how we want to live our lives. You agree?
And for me nonviolence is one such choice we can all make — or not: If someone asks “Can we create a world free of coercion, a world that works for everyone, and where everyone only does what they are fully able and willing to do?”, instead of offering an answer like “Yes, we can” or “No, we cannot”, nonviolence invites us to ask instead “Do you want to create a world without coercion, where everyone only does what they are fully able and willing to do?” The question about whether we can at all becomes secondary, because we don’t know until we’ve tried.
And if you do answer indeed “Yes”, at least for now, then the next question that might quickly follow is “So what is that I can do to align my actions with this vision of a world that works for all?”
In my experience, it’s not a yes that sticks easily once uttered, quite the opposite. I regularly become overwhelmed, frustrated, annoyed by this yes to nonviolence. So it’s a yes that I lose and then find again and again and again. Because, for me it not just means “Yes, I want that world that works for everyone”, but it also means “Yes, I want to learn about all the ways that the current world does not work for so many people.” For me it means “Yes, I want to open my eyes to information that is out there, but uncomfortable at times, and often painful.” All these additional “yeses” might be less obvious initially, but are definitely part of the deal, and they are the ones that makes the overall yes to nonviolence so incredibly hard. Even more so for someone like me, who is so privileged in so many ways, and for whom (mostly) the world has worked. It’s crushing to take away layer after layer and realize how much of my comfort, well-being and access to resources is a result of historic and ongoing extraction from humans and nature, both where I live and far away. It really sucks.
I am still left wondering what can I do so that I can choose nonviolence more often and more fully. A part of the answer seems to be mourning (i.e. crying) for me. It’s a difficult one, I was so much trained out of being a soft being that can be touched by others’ pain and produce and show tears in response. And I have made some way already, I have managed a few times again in the last year to cry with noises and twist my face in the presence of other people, but it’s far less than what I would need. And weeks still pass by without me crying even in silence and by myself at all.