What Would You Stop For?

It was a sunny Saturday morning in Mitchell park, an expanse of grass and picnic areas and play structures and courts for pickleball and tennis and basketball. Tucked into a neighborhood in Palo Alto the park is green and spacious, dotted with sculptures, bordered by a beautiful newish library and a manicured little league field. Its span more than accommodates all the people doing what people do on days off, walking, playing, eating, swinging.

I was on a run, grooving to my music, in my head winning one argument after another with people I’ve never even talked to. I shuffled past a protest organized on a long section of grass, not really seeing what the protest was for.

I’ve been alive long enough to witness a lot of injustices. I’ve lived in Berkeley so I’ve encountered my share of protests. I’ve participated in a few. These days there are so many issues to care about, but our brains can only take so much anguish at one time. Our eyes learn to slide past protests when we have seen too many, when our brainpan can’t fit one more travesty.

My eyes slid past this one, until they didn’t.

I stopped, turned around, went back. What was it that pierced my insular trance?

Stillness.

There were maybe ten protesters standing in a carefully spaced grid of rows and columns, all facing the same direction.

Just standing, staring straight ahead.

Not speaking.

Not looking around.

Not making eye contact.

Not shifting around or fidgeting.

Unmoving.

Resolute. 

In a world of constant movement and stimulation it was the stillness that got my attention.

Without words they were speaking, using their motionless bodies to say this is the issue that we care about right now. In this moment, in this place, nothing means more. Getting closer I found a sign and a little table with a petition on it in protest of the Chinese Communist Party.

Like the sculptures scattered through the park they stood. A moment of immobility while all around them children played soccer and people danced in an outdoor hip hop class and couples held hands and dads chased toddlers and moms worked on their large Philz coffees.

A refusal to participate in life, for the moment, as a way to point to injustice on the other side of the world.

It turns out I had room in my brain for one more injustice. Maybe caring about injustice expands, like love expands. Like a parent with one child relieved to discover that there is more than enough love for the second child too. Plenty to go around. Love growing without limits.

I signed their petition.

I went back to my run but their stillness stuck with me. Several weeks later it still is with me. In a world of twenty-four hours a day ‘news’ cycles, of a fire hose of stimulation coming at us almost constantly, interrupted by phone and computer notifications all day long, I found myself almost jealous of their one-pointed attention. One issue. Standing still until people noticed.

It’s got me thinking. What is my one-point issue? What would I stop everything else for to stand still while the world continued its business around me?

What would you stop for?

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