I’ve always been a rather touchy person. I’m big on hugs, kisses, and cuddles. I’m like some kind of curly haired labrador. My canine counterparts sniff people’s hands before rolling over for a belly rub, and I go in for a hug before I decide whether or not you are a human with a heart. You could be a cylon. We don’t know. I tend to trust good huggers more than the non good huggers, regardless of anything else I might know about you. You could be a serial killer, but if you hugged me warmly first, I might believe that your problems stemmed from a crappy childhood and not your messed up mind.
Go figure then, that I move to a country with a culture that is not big on dogs or hugs. My first few months here, I encountered my fair share of cold shoulders. Mainly because I would try to impart a shoulder squeeze or hand pat onto members of my host family and they would shy away as if I had a disease none of them were willing to talk about. I should have seen this “you can look but not touch” thing coming. Here in my Muslim corner of the world, men and women sit separately (something I learned my first day of school when I tried to take a seat with my male co-teacher). A handshake is what I have come to refer to as “the sweaty fish”, in which two individuals will lightly and briefly touch fingertips, usually with zero eye contact and lots of head bowing. With most men I meet, touching them is out of the question, because you know, men and women touching…yeesh. Instead we bow very solemnly to each other from a safe distance. I essentially try not to touch anyone anymore. The personal space bubble has become an almost literal thing for me here.
Six months of not touching people, or rather being afraid of touching a person and offending them, has even made me afraid to be near other male volunteers. What would people think if they saw me sitting with a guy friend on (dare i say it) the same small bench? I knew I had gone off the deep end with this touchy stuff last weekend, when my good friend Mike came to visit me at my site. We had a great few days together chumming it up. The morning he left we sealed our friendship and said goodbye with a quick and furtive…high five.
To properly tell the story of how I transformed from a lovable cuddle bug, to a love-me-at-a-distance bug we have to go back a few weeks to when I joined the Ibu soccer team.
Waiting on my bed one afternoon was a very formal looking invitation from what can only be termed as the “Mom Club” to participate in an upcoming soccer tournament. I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Or rather, the Ibus couldn’t get me to say yes fast enough. Not an hour after receiving the invitation, two women were at my house ready to escort me to our first practice.
Our coach was a local farmer who moonlighted as our team’s fearless leader. His main role seemed to be barking warm up stretches at us all while puffing on his hand rolled cigarette. Let me paint this picture for you real quick: we were terrible. Not only did the women on my team tend to run away from the ball screaming, but in scrimmage the strategy seemed to be to kick it as hard as you could in any direction you felt like. This resulted in more free throws and corner kicks than actual playing, so we usually could hang around on the field and carry on a pretty decent conversation while a few women on the other side scurried around frantically. There was this one time I kicked the ball over the goal post and Coach’s eyes lit up and his jaw dropped (the cigarette stayed put though). You would think he had just discovered the next Pele. He made it his mission to take me aside after every practice and impart his great strategic wisdom to me, telling me that I “must kick with all my strength”.
The tournament itself was a hoot. There are moments in life that are so especially surreal and funny that you worry experiencing them all on your own for fear that nobody will believe you when you talk about it later. That is my reality here. The day of the game, there were over a hundred rabid Ibu fans out on the field. Vendors were selling sodas the flavor of colors instead of fruits. It was quite a spectacle. Our first round of competing, I kept hearing my name broadcasted loudly above the crowd and realized someone had made the poor mistake of sharing my life story with the game commentators. So while my team and I were chasing down the ball from misplaced kicks, the crowd was enjoying little tidbits about “the American player, Ms. Emil”. (Sidenote: Yes, unfortunately my name is a tad difficult to pronounce here. In my community I am known simply as “Emil”). Over the turned up speakers, the commentators would discuss the fact that I was able to eat rice for breakfast (“She eats rice for breakfast, even though she does not in America!”), that I have a tall sister (“She has a younger sister…who is taller than she is!”), that I speak Indonesian (“She speaks Indonesian, but she does not speak Javanese!”) and that I enjoy running every morning (“Some mornings, you can even see her running!”).
My team won in a very movie like moment when I did as Coach had instructed and kicked the ball with all my strength up and into the corner of the goal. The crowd rushed the field, a few of my teammates started to cry. One Ibu even fell to her knees praising Allah for our win. Everyone was shaking my hand, pulling me by the elbow into photos, and cheering my name. It was all rather exciting. The most incredible thing though, was that I hadn’t experienced that kind of sheer volume of human touch since I had left the states. And honestly? It was weirding me out. I kept trying to bow people away from me as they rushed me with open arms. Arms wrapped around me, hands were on my back, cheeks pressed against mine, and yet I felt completely disconnected to the people around me. I didn’t know them at all.
Touching is not something I really do here anymore. I have to rely on my other senses to convey and create connections. Stripped of casual embraces or a quick kiss, I have become much more aware of others around me. I listen harder. Not only to the words people say, but the way they say them. I watch people, even when they are not speaking. I am the Radiohead definition of “Creep”. There are so many quiet boundaries we wrap around ourselves to keep the more complicated parts unseen. A hug, with it’s cheerful largeness sometimes crashes right through these delicate layers we all have, leaving no room for a more meaningful exchange. I moved here hoping to gain a little perspective, and certainly some meaningful exchanges, but mostly I came here to acquire a heightened sense of empathy. The trick? Take a step back.
I have this one student, named Rindu. In Indonesian “rindu” means “miss” as in “I miss you”. He told my counterpart and I that his father named him Rindu because he works on a different island and only gets to see him once or twice a year. Rindu is a great kid. My favorite thing about him is his big, toothy grin. Unfortunately, Rindu is always falling asleep in class, and he doesn’t always complete the homework assignments. When a student behaves this way, many teachers at my school immediately write him or her off, declaring that student to be “lazy” and “unmotivated”.
Last weekend I went for an afternoon walk and passed Rindu’s house. He was out playing soccer in the front yard with a few other boys. In typical Indonesian fashion, I was ushered into the house by his mother and served a glass of tea. It was from her that I learned Rindu is the oldest boy and is therefore responsible in helping her maintain the small half acre of land the family owns, as well as care for his younger sister and cousin, who also lives with them.
Seeing and hearing about Rindu’s home situation made me want to cry. It is, unfortunately, not an uncommon story. Many of my students live with distant relatives, or in boarding homes while their parents work in distant cities and countries. It kills me that adults are dismissing these kids as “unmotivated”. They certainly have a lot more on their plates than I did at eleven years old. It makes me want to gather them all up in a hug. But a hug, aside from making my students incredibly uncomfortable, won’t change anything. So instead I sit and I listen. I listen with all the love and compassion I have. I hear what they are saying and I try to absorb and remember it all.
In writing this post I looked up the root of the word empathy. It comes from the Greek empatheia–em (into) and pathos (feeling), which to me suggests a kind of penetration, or travel. You enter another person’s pain and insecurities as you’d enter another country. Something I find fitting as I have traveled far to live in a completely different life here. While I listen and do my best to understand where my students, fellow teachers, Peace Corps volunteers and community members are coming from, I often can’t. But I think that this is okay. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. It requires acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see: a student sleeping in class is connected to his early morning chores is connected to helping his mother run the house is connected to his long distanced father is connected to an Indonesian province with little employment opportunity is connected to a country still shaping it’s own national economy.
Empathy is always a precarious balance between gift and invasion. Offering yourself up as a sounding board, as a sponge for someone else’s excess emotion is lovely. It can also be frightening, when someone asks to see the things we keep locked inside, especially in a culture that tip toes around everyone else’s feelings for fear of embarrassing or upsetting others.
Yet, I find myself listening and asking people here anyway. Empathy isn’t just remembering to say that must be really hard–it’s also about figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. We do after all, try our hardest to keep the complicated, heavier, more grotesque pieces under wraps. Being empathetic isn’t just about listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to, no matter the answer.
Six months into my service I’m learning that empathy isn’t just something that happens to us, like a synaptic flight or fight spark response. It is also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. Deciding to listen to another’s sadness even when you are deep in your own. Or, truly listening to the trials of another when your world is nothing but happy rainbows and sunshine. To make the decision to empathize in itself suggests making an effort. It isn’t easy, when you think you have enough going on in your own life already. But, like most things I’m discovering at this ripe age of 24, not all can be solved with a hug and a giant soccer tournament trophy (although trust me, a shiny trophy definitely helps). So next time you go out to happy hour with your friends to catch up on life or ask a co worker how their weekend was, I encourage you to really listen. What you discover may expand your world and your relationship, filling it with more love and understanding than you initially thought was possible. And then give that person a hug, because even if I don’t get another solid bear hug for the next 21 months someone else out there should 🙂
*Thank you all for the birthday wishes earlier this month! I had a great time celebrating with my students and Indo family. I’m so blessed to have all this love in my life, and I already know it is going to be a fantastic 24th year. Hope you enjoyed your September wherever you all are in the world!
rootsandfernweh 