To begin with it was difficult.
I arrived early and anxious aiming to participate in the offering of hugs to people in Newcastle. I sat on the steps at Grey's Monument. I worried. Could I really do this hug thing? Or would I just get up and go home or go and sit with a drink somewhere? Hugging is hard for me, as I said in the previous post.
I watched as Andrew arrived. He's the brains of the operation. The one who started the Facebook group through which this activity is organised. He's the one who knows to come with plenty of free hugs signs. I watched him get out a sign and stand there. I watched as people came and accepted the offer.
That's an important sentence. "People came ..." We're not militant about this. We're not accosting every passing stranger and telling them they should be hugged. We're not about forcing people into anything they wouldn't appreciate. Nothing like that. We just make an offer, mostly just through having those signs, and people accept or decline as they wish.
I watched as a second hugger arrived. Still I sat. Fighting the anxiety. A big part of me just wanted to get on a Metro and go home. But then stubbornness set in. "I came here to hug and I'm bloody going to hug and all this anxiety can just piss off rather than heading into greater panic or a shutdown. This is part of my recovery and I'm not going to run away." Sometimes being bloody minded and stubborn has its benefits.
So I got up. Said hello to Andrew. Accepted a sign. And do you know what? It was okay. It really was okay. More than okay. I had a really good time and brought smiles to lots of people too. At least on that occasion I overcame stories I told myself about the things I can't do. I overcame fear. And discovered for a while that there hadn't been anything real to fear in the first place. My story tells me that I cannot stand on a street with a sign saying "Free Hugs". Yet I've now done so three times. My story tells me that I'd never even hug a person with a "Free Hugs" sign. I've done that too. I don't know who I hugged, a lone woman on a Newcastle street who I've never seen again.
The stories we tell ourselves are stories. They're made to be challenged. When we say "I can't do this" we should ask ourselves whether we are just telling ourselves a story, setting a script for our lives that's as fictional as a soap opera. I should know. I have
a lot of stories.
A friend would have me ask myself, frequently, "What's the worst that can happen?" Well what would have been the worst? Discovering that the activity wasn't for me. That wouldn't have been a
bad thing. Plenty of activities aren't for me. Experiencing them and finding that out is a
good thing. Much better than refusing to try. Unless they're dangerous or abusive or ethically terrible. In which case refusal is a perfectly good idea.
In the end five people stood with signs underneath Grey's Monument on Saturday. Let's set the scene and then mention a few people I talked with.
Monument is a site of protests, of markets, of buskers. It's a place of variety. On Saturday we were surrounded by the following:
The Revolutionary Communist Group
Not the Revolutionary Communist Party. Don't make that mistake. They don't always get on with each other very well. And don't you dare mix them up with the Socialist Worker Party.
The RCG didn't seem to smile much and I was told they didn't like hugs when offered them before. Theirs is the language of war. We'll smash them. We'll fight them. We'll break them. And the Labour Party are racists and the Tories are fascists. We'll crush them. It's a shame. They were there with a main message of welcome for refugees but that was quite lost among the war cries. Being presented with a petition and being asked to "Sign against racism" is all very well but the statement on the petition was more complicated than that. It didn't just say "I'm against racism."
I've been to some left wing meetings. When someone from the RCG or the RCP stand up to ask a question pretty much everyone curses under their breath! They are so extreme and ultimately what they propose in their questions and counter questions doesn't make sense to most people. What follows in the discussion doesn't seem to do anyone any good at all. Not the communists. And not those others on the left wing who disagree with the communists.
Then again, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me how anyone with good intentions can still be a communist. If we look at the way communism has worked out in every country it's been tried how can we want it? Capitalism may not be perfect - I'm not keen on it - but it's generally less authoritarian, controlling, and repressive than any communist regime. How could I want communism?
I'd quite like a positive demonstration. I talked about this with Andrew. The idea of having a positivity stall on the streets of Newcastle or a full-blown positivity march. Yes, I'm anti-racism, anti-homophobia, and so on. But how about a positive chant? "What do we want? To love and accept people! When do we want it? Now!" Maybe I'm just a hippy born into the wrong decade. I could even take a Jesus quote like "Love one another" or a Buddhist slogan of "Let's be compassionate." Fighting the "Tory scum" is all very well and I'm sure chucking out a government has its place but I've not seen much in the way of positive demonstrations. Hmm. I wonder whether that idea is going to percolate and then happen.
Palestinian Rights
There is often a Palestinian rights campaign at Monument on a Saturday. I agree with much of what they say and see that much of the way Palestinian people have been treated by the state of Israel is terrible. While I can't condone violent reactions and abhor the way both sides have talked about "maintaining the balance of terror" I can understand the desperation that has led to such violence and I can see that more diplomatic solutions have had a seventy year history of not working very well. The whole situation is more complicated than most campaigners say and I confess I don't understand it very well.
Animal Rights
This is a group of rights protestors with costumes. Until I read the words they chalked on the pavement and saw the words they wore I wondered from the design on their tops whether they were some kind of far right group. The logos seemed similar in style of design - though happily not in intent.
On Saturday they were calling us all to give up dairy products on the grounds of animal mistreatment and slaughter within the dairy industry.
They turned out to be a good bunch of people. Far more smiling than the communists. One of them took the hugging photo. I have sympathy with their views too. I doubt that I'll ever be vegan but I do want to eat less meat. It's even tempting to see whether there's an alternative milk I can have in tea or on cereal. I recognise the animal suffering and I admit that I do feel bad that I don't know where my meat comes from or the condition in which animals are kept on those farms. Perhaps I should do something about that.
On the radio this morning a priest said that humans deserve dignity and respect because he believes that humans are made in the image of God. I have two problems with this. Firstly it assumes that if you take God out of the equation there is no reason to give each other dignity and respect. Atheists have many reasons to raise up humanity that don't rely on a supernatural being or a statement in an ancient religious book. Secondly, what does that statement say about anything the book does not say is made in the image of God? Animals aren't made in his image. Plants aren't. The planet isn't. Just humans. So if the starting basis for a view that humans deserve dignity is that we are made in God's image we imply that nothing else deserves the same consideration. We all know instinctively that this isn't the case. We see someone hurting a dog and we react because we believe in treating that dog well, that it is worthy of dignity and care. But perhaps that Imago Dei is also part of why many people instinctively find the vegan to be weird, fringe, extreme, and a bit annoying; because we have grown up in a society based on that Judeo-Christian view. Perhaps it's the meat eaters (people like me) who should be seen as extreme. You eat cows? You drink cow baby milk? You're an oddball! Hmm. Perhaps I need to make some changes to my own life. Perhaps not - this long, unintended paragraph is very much "a thought off the top of my head."
Busking
Wow! We had a treat on Saturday. At least I think so. There are usually buskers at Monument. They range from singer-songwriters to jazz saxophonists. Percussionists to rappers. Solo performers to full bands. Guitarists, bassists, even an expert harmonica player. I think we're really fortunate in Newcastle to have so many good musicians busking on our streets.
On Saturday we were treated to a solo acoustic guitar player. He was good. Seriously good. The way he plucked and hit those strings and the body of the guitar was pretty special. I've listened to similar music for fun - the music of someone like Estas Tonne is a relaxation for me.
At times I was dancing a little to his playing and when he played a song I sang for a bit too.
Marketing
On Saturday we had people around handing out leaflets and cards about local services. We also had some football skills thing related to a company. I didn't take in what that was about but plenty of people seemed to be scoring goals in a tent.
Guided Tours
The Newcastle City Tour Guides were offering trips to the top of Grey's Monument. You have to book for these trips online and they're booked up long in advance. Usually. But more of that in another post.
So that's the scene at Monument. People walking by. Shopping. Chatting. Hurrying. Sitting on the steps with their lunch. Waiting for friends. We weren't treated to any religious input. Unless you count the various socialist and communist groups as a religion. Which in many ways they are. Often church groups are there praying for people to be healed. Or a Christian evangelist might turn up, of the kind who wouldn't appreciate me much. On many weekends an Islamic group are there too and sometimes a group from the local Hare Krishna temple will be chanting and offering books for a fee.
We stood. We chatted. We hugged. We appreciated the sunshine. And we hugged some more.
People smiled. They came asking for hugs. They enjoyed the experience, one more chink of sunlight in their day.
People frowned. They turned at wide angles to avoid any possibility of hugs.
People stared. People took photos of us.
People asked us why we were doing what we were doing. Were we from a religion? Did we want money? Why offer hugs to strangers? Why indeed? Simply to add something positive to people's days. Something to bring a smile and often a laugh too.
Some of the people talked.
A couple who came for hugs were wearing big rucksacks for walking. I asked them whether they were walking far. They were. Very far. They were three months into a six month walking trip around the whole of the country.
A man approached me and started complaining at me. Almost shouting. He was quite cross with me. He thought I was one of the Communists. It turned out that the man was a refugee from Venezuela. He had been forced to flee the country because of the repressive actions of the socialist regime led by Hugo Chavez. Chavez wanted a workers' paradise and did do a lot of things that were good but there was a downside too. And then it all went wrong, with consequences that continue today as we've seen in the news within the last week. The refugee told me I was awful for supporting the Chavez government and now the Maduro government and the policies that meant he'd had to flee. I can understand his anger at me. I don't think I managed to communicate that I wasn't a communist at all.
A few people asked us, "How do we do this too?" A fair question. There's a Facebook group for this particular group of huggers. https://www.facebook.com/HugNewcastle/ There are other groups across the country. Anyone can start another or just go out on a sunny day with a Free Hugs sign and spread a little bit of love and acceptance.
A group on a hen weekend were very pleased. They had a list of tasks they had to achieve and one of them was to hug a stranger. We were pleased to tick that from their list. Andrew also gave one of them a piggy back because that was on the list too. It looked like they were going to have a good day ticking off items from their list.
Then it was time to stop hugging. Two hours is enough. Awwwww! The opportunity was there to go out with everyone for lunch and I'd have loved to do that - thus ignoring another one of the false stories I've often told myself, that I'm bad at social, bad at people. Alas, I couldn't go and spend more time with the crazy huggers of Newcastle. Hopefully next time.
Not this time though because ten minutes before we were due to stop I noticed the town guides I mentioned earlier and asked one of them, "How do I get to climb to the top of the monument?" I didn't even know that people were going up there. I was told that there was a booking process online and that they offered the opportunity once a month. But it was always booked up well in advance. At that point another guide said "I've just realised we have a space today. In ten minutes time. That never happens."
So instead of lunch I climbed Grey's Monument. I'll share the photos next time. Newcastle is a very lovely city.
