I CAN HOLD YOUR HAND

Long ago, in another universe before now, I was a young man earning my degree in theatre at San Jose State University. I had this crazy teacher. He was "experimental", came from LA, and everyone sort of thought of him as nuts. He directed a show, taught acting classes, and also voice and diction, one of the basic classes you took in your first year as a theatre student. And that's where he taught me. In class, we'd have all sorts of long discussions about politics, mysticism, life, death, and on rare occasions, voice and diction. One day, he announced that there was going to be a speaker on campus, a concentration camp survivor, and we were all to go see his speech. So off I went.

The man' speech was life changing. He spoke with a gravity that could not be denied. He had been through things most of us will never be able to fully understand. I expected him to be full of sorrow and rage. But when he spoke, even when he was telling stories of his experiences in the camp, the main power that came out of him was love. I call it a power because that is how it felt. Like a wave of energy emanating from him, a burst of this overpowering emotion, a joy in life and a mercy for those who can't find that joy. As he spoke, I felt embarrassed about my ease of life compared to his. I felt shame for humanity for what we are capable of inflicting to one another. I felt guilt.

After the speech, I approached him to thank him for his speech. He shook my hand and smiled, and I asked me my name. We spoke briefly, and I told him how I felt guilty when I listened to him. He asked me why. I told him that it wasn't fair that this had happened to him, and not to me. That I had lived a life of privilege. He nodded his head, considering what I had said. And then he said to me, "I have never been raped. I will never know what it is to be a woman who has been raped. But I still can hold her hand."

A lot of hands need holding in the world.

Here's a song. It's You Don't Know How It Feels by Tom Petty.