We Are Not Alone

It was strange today to be so weighed down. When our warm-up began this morning and my professor said, as she does, while we moved through the space, “You are here, you are present, you are ready to work,” I knew that I was not, and I left to let my body feel what it needed to feel. Another American classmate went with me. Among other things, we talked about the incredible faith it takes to be here, lying on yoga mats, inviting our joints to do less, our muscles to release up or down, bringing ourselves to the verge of tears trying to become a blank page behind the neutral mask, the human of all humans, moving with urgency and fearless curiosity through the ocean of all oceans, the forest of all forests. It takes faith, real faith, to believe that somehow this work matters, that we belong here, especially on a day like this.

When I came back into the studio my Finnish classmate was in his mask, scaling a mountain. He is an artist who commits 100% every time we do anything. I don’t think he has sat out of a moment of our work, nor missed a moment of class. His effort was so beautiful and so generous it brought tears of gratitude to my eyes. I don’t know exactly how, but I know that it matters, wherever one is and whatever one does, when someone is that present and that committed. It matters to the community. It matters to the work we are doing. It is noble.

All day people asked how I was doing. All day I shook my head and shrugged and tried in my bumbling way to say, “I am fine. I, unless I choose otherwise, will be fine. It is everyone else I am worried about.”

And as I tried to say that, I looked back into the faces of my sweet compassionate classmates: one from Russia; two from China; a classmate from Colombia; a classmate whose father, a poet in Egypt, lives in dread of having to fight again the war he’s already fought twice; Jewish classmates; Turkish professors; first generation Americans; non-binary classmates; queer classmates, some of whom have partners and spouses back in the United States.

Every one of us who is here studying is insanely privileged. And many of us hold one or more marginalized identities, have been raised under oppressive regimes, and are still whole, joyful, creative, compassionate people. This moment may be, once again, “unprecedented” by some measures, but it is hardly unique. That story of American Exceptionalism is insidious, and it often keeps us looking over the heads of our neighbors to some far horizon, thinking we have the answers on democracy, upward mobility, quality of life, a robust economy. It was a blessing and a comfort, humbling and reassuring, to look into my friends’ eyes today. The lesson, the lesson of lessons, is that we need each other. We are not and we can never be alone.