Two women were raped in my neighborhood this week, one in the building across the street from mine, and another near where my friend Virginia lives. I have strong feelings about this. A mix of anger, fear, disgust, and hate. Along with these feelings are some other sentiments--the desire for peace, the desire for transcendence, and the hope that, if I were put in a situation of danger, I would respond from the highest possible state of aliveness and peace-centered compassion.
I have heard a number of stories from women who were threatened with assault, and how they were able to respond to the attacker in a way that diffused the attack. Some of them resisted physically and yelled. I heard of one woman who became so enraged when a man broke into her apartment and tried to rape her that she attacked him and beat him senseless. Two stories, however, have stayed with me above all others.
A woman was living in a halfway house as a social worker in a dangerous part of the city. Late one night, after all the other staff had gone home, she awoke to her door bursting open and a man dressed all in black with his face concealed standing at the foot of her bed. For a moment, the two of them paused, breathing heavily. She happened to have gone through nonviolent r
esistance training, and one of the principles she learned was that it is difficult for the brain to experience both extreme aggression and curiosity at the same time. She knew that one tactic to diffusing violence is to do something which makes the other person curious or confused. She decided in that moment to ask him very casually,
"Hello. Do you happen to know what time it is? I'm always waking up too early these days because my alarm clock is broken."
Incredibly, he began fumbling for his watch, and said, "3 am."
Somehow, they started a chatty conversation, right there, in the middle of the night, in her bedroom.
Soon, before the attacker knew it, he said talking comfortably with the social worker down in the living room. It turns out he was homeless and began telling her the story of his life. She ended up inviting him to stay in the halfway house for the night. The next morning, he ate breakfast and they said goodbye like old friends.
The second story is even more incredible, if you can imagine that. And true!
Another woman who also went through the same nonviolence training told this story:
At dusk one summer evening, she was running through Central Park on her way home. Just ahead on the trail she saw a large man standing on the path, blocking her way. She immediately felt a sense of warning, but continued jogging. As she neared him, he came close to her and grabbed her arm. This happened very fast, and so many other things transpired in that moment. She said she immediately felt fear start to close her down, and as the man began pulling her toward the bushes, she saw a person ahead on the path. She noticed it was a small man, much smaller than her attacker. Immediately she felt a sense of concern for this small man coming down the trail, that somehow he might get hurt if he was to become involved in this situation. This feeling of concern filled her, and she was able in that moment to also feel compassion for the man grabbing her. She looked into his face, and instinctively said, "Here, let's go over here," and, walking in the same direction with the man, she pulled him deeper into the bushes off the path. This was unexpected, of course, and the man was a bit thrown off. For a moment, his grip lessened.
The woman spotted a bench off to the left past the bushes. "Let's sit down over there," she said very calmly and naturally, as if the whole situation was the most normal thing in the world. The assailant went along with it and sat down, still holding her arm tightly.
Connecting to that sense of compassion she felt, the woman looked again into his face, into his wild, violent eyes, and said, "As I look in your eyes, I see a lot of sadness and pain, and that you're very troubled. Would you like to talk about it?"
Incredibly, he began to talk to her. All sorts of things began to come out. Before long, he was pouring out stories to her about how he had been a soldier in Vietnam, forced to do horrible things, like enter villages and kill women and children. Because he was Black, he explained, the white soldiers had made him do the dirtiest work, the worst of the killing.
They spent a long time talking on that bench in the park, while night began to fall. The woman was getting cold and shivered. She noticed that he still had his hand on her arm, but not as tightly. Looking up at him, she said, "Do you mind walking me home? It's getting late and I should be getting back now."
After hesitating for a moment, he said "Yes." They walked back to her apartment and just before she entered the front door, he asked, "What's your favorite flower, ma'am?"
"Daisies," she answered.
They parted ways; the woman watched him walk off into the night.
The next morning, she found a bunch of daisies in her doorstep, along with a note that said, "Thank you for being my friend."
This story always stayed with me, because it is an example of how much more powerful peace and love are than hate and violence. It's not to say that all situations are equal, or every person can and should respond the way these people did. It's more than that. Peace is a way of life. Just as much as fear or hate. I wrestle with these polar opposites--feeling a sense of rage at times when men cat-call me on the street, feeling disgusted with men generally, when I read about the staggering abuse and violence commited by men against women worldwide.
Other times, I feel a sense of abiding peace, an inviolate serenity, so that even when men say lewd things to me as I walk past them, their words don't affect me. They simply roll off me like droplets of mercury and sink into the ground.
But today, the recent neighborhood rapes fresh in my mind, I whirled around and snapped "Shut up!" to man who leeringly cat-called me on the street this afternoon.
It didn't make me feel better.
I spent the rest of the afternoon seething, my pulse hammering through my body, violent thoughts surging through my mind. It's not the way I want to live.
I want to live in a such a way, that, if faced with violence and rape, I will act from the level of peace, compassion, and love. I know this is the safest way. I know it and I will continue to strive for this goal.
If ever faced with violence, perhaps I would resist physically, perhaps I would diffuse the it with words or with the look on my face or the peace in my being. Perhaps a dog would come at that moment and begin barking. Who knows. All I know is, love is more powerful than fear.
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