Every Tuesday morning I take the 25 bus to Heaton Moor in Manchester where I teach my weekly Cerebral Palsy yoga class. One of the highlights of this is not only the class but an encounter on my journey home. At the bus stop, I have struck up a friendship with an old lady in her nineties. I always look forward to seeing her and sharing our thoughts. For a woman in her late nineties she is quite a remarkable lady. She takes the bus to her weekly keep fit class at the local church, where she gets to spend time with other friends and they share lunch together. She told me last week that at Easter they are rather looking forward to having salmon sandwiches for lunch as a special treat. We only speak for a few minutes each week, but over the years we have developed something of a friendship. I really enjoy hearing her stories about her life. Recently she told me that as a young woman she had traveled with friends in an open-top charabanc to Blackpool. A charabanc was a early motor coach, usually open-topped, common in Britain during the early part of the 20th century, popular for ‘works outings’ to the country or the seaside. On another occasion she shared with me stories of her late husband who, when he was a handsome young man, sported a rather dashing moustache. She has also shared her experiences of living and working in Manchester as a young woman during the Second World War blitz when the German Luftwaffe heavily bombed the city centre.
I was reminded of my meetings at the bus stop when I recently listened to a talk by James Low, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist who grew up in Glasgow in the 1950’s. He was commenting on the fact that if you stood at a bus stop in those days, sooner or later somebody would start up a conversation with you. He felt the reason for these exchanges was because community was valued as something important. People valued being a part of something greater than themselves and valued the people who were part of their community. Generally, in the modern world, isolation and individualism are given greater presidency. I feel that this type of isolated view of the world needs examining. I notice that the small encounters that I have with people during my day remind me to stay connected to others and help me to feel a part of the world, rather than seeing myself as separate and isolated from other people. From a Buddhist and yogic perspective we are not separate from the world or other people, but connected and linked by many unseen threads of interconnection. One of the reasons we experience suffering and difficulties in life is because we believe that we are separate. I think it is important to take up your place in the world but to always remember to stay in relationship to ourselves and others.
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibres, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
Herman Melville (author of Moby Dick)