As I was sitting at my desk on Saturday morning I saw a beautiful, young woman run by on the sidewalk before me. Moving swiftly, her stride was easy and long– her hair streaming behind her like a banner. It was hard, in that moment, for a middle-aged man on oxygen support such as myself, not to think of her as invincible, a radiant vector speeding by into the future.<\/p>\n
I continued to watch her, and just a little further up the street she joined a small group of 20-something women waiting for her on the sidewalk. They were beautiful and happy, these women. Smiles were their default setting, and as they stood there in a semi-circle chatting with one another and comparing the signs they’d made for the Women’s March, they seemed so full of light as to very nearly be glowing. They were going off to do something important, \u00a0they were going to try to influence the world rather than merely survive in it, and knowing that made me hopeful and proud. <\/span><\/p>\n I didn’t actually attend the Women’s March. I was a little bit uncertain if it was my place to be there or not, and so I stayed home and watched from the sidelines. But I should have known just from looking at these women, from the way they genially accepted my clumsy thumbs up from the window, that I would have been entirely welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n Millions of people, it turned out, rose to this occasion, millions were welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n All through the day my social media streams were flooded with images from the marches. As I was following via Facebook and Twitter, I was seeing the feeds of people I knew and loved, so they were not strangers to me, but real people– warm, intelligent and kind people with complicated and sometimes difficult lives. It was their faces, and those of their daughters and sons and partners that were looking back at me from my computer monitor, and regardless of how heavy or congested their lives might have become, there they were, all so beautiful and strong and joyous. <\/span><\/p>\n