“Connection requires participation”

In her book, Tales of a Female Nomad, Rita Golden Gelman tells about living in a Zapotec village in Mexico for a short time.

The village is small and Rita is obviously a foreigner. She looks American and does not speak the dialect. For many days she walks around the village and smiles at the people hoping to make a connection, but she gets nowhere. Each night she returns to her small room feeling more and more alone.

Finally, after the fifth day, a young woman named Juanita approaches Rita and asks her for a favor. Fearing that Juanita is going to ask for money or something else she can’t give, Rita decides to take a chance anyway. Juanita asks Rita to try on her clothes. She dresses Rita in the complicated and cumbersome garb of the village women and from then on Rita is one of them. She is allowed to cook with the women, help people in the village with their problems, learn the language and dance at the celebrations.

After she has left the village and is reflecting on her experience she says: I walked into a foreign world where people were afraid of me, and I walked out with hugs and waves and even a few tears. Initially I thought I could connect with a smile; but it wasn’t enough. I needed a teacher. Juanita’s lesson would serve me well for the rest of my life. Connection requires participation. In this setting, clothes and language were the passwords to acceptance.

We all need teachers. Often times we find ourselves in situations that seem as foreign to us as the Zapotec village was to Rita. What a gift to have someone to help us navigate the situation or to be allowed to be the teacher that helps someone else. And…there is a difference between telling someone what to do and guiding….one sure way to tell the teacher is that they are swimming right along beside us instead of yelling instructions from the shore. Connection requires participation.