Bowing: it's like French kissing

When I think of bows, I think of a big person making a little person do something. I think of supplication, dominance, or control. As a result, I'm not so much a fan of bowing. It makes me feel little, controlled, and not so much my individual free self.
It's a little tricky to not be a fan of bowing at the Zen Center because at the Zen Center you bow, a lot. Over the past year I have been bowing, a lot. I've been bowing, because it's what you do. I've tried to learn when to bow and how to bow well. But I've never enjoyed it.
This past week, I bowed...voluntarily...three times. And one of them was even outside of the zen center. It was after school, on Thursday, when the parents picked up their kids right on time. I bowed in gratitude for their promptness that allowed me to start my glorious four day weekend right away. The first voluntary bow was at Young Urban Zen on Monday night.. It was 9 o'clock so we had to end, but I didn't want to end without bowing to each other. I wanted to express my gratitude to the people in the room for the wisdom and insight they had offered me but I also wanted us to be together. I wanted us to bow in unison because we're a community now and bowing together is like one big group hug, only not so cheezy and awkward. But the last bow was the one that really got me thinking. It was after practice period tea on Thursday night. People were packing up to leave and I wanted to say ,"Wait, wait! We haven't 'bowed out'" I didn't actually say anything but when I thought about saying it I thought, "What are you doing? You're asking for a bow?" And then I thought, "Oh, this is like when you first learned to French kiss."

The first time I traveled outside of the US it was to visit my friends who have a pearl farm in Tahiti. Tahiti is French controlled (or it was when I was there), so many of the customs there mimic those in France. When you say hello or goodbye, you kiss people on each of their cheeks. I did NOT like this custom. First of all, this was beyond no personal space, this was shared personal space. You had to actually kiss another person's cheek, the first time you met them! And then, logically, it made no sense to me. How can I kiss your cheek, if you're kissing my cheek? And then there's the whole form: do you kiss the air, do you kiss the cheek, who kisses first, how long do you kiss, do you make noise, etc. It took me a while to get used to it, especially when we would go to someone's house and have to kiss everybody in the room.
But I stayed in Tahiti for three weeks. And over those three weeks, all of the Tahitians we met were so incredibly generous with their space, their food, their belongings, their time, their love... And I kissed every one of their cheeks. And we stayed with my friends' good friends'. And I kissed their cheeks too. And over time, we saw the same people over and over again and I began to associate a kiss on each cheek with either a fond hello or a sad goodbye. By the time I flew home to California, I felt like kissing everyone on the cheek when I saw them. I was grateful for hugs, but I also wanted to repeat that gesture of greeting, of sweetness, of intimacy.
I think that this is what has happened to me with bowing at the zen center. My association with bows has changed.. What I once perceived as forced supplication, awkward mimicry, and an attempt to follow forms has become a genuine physical embodiment of gratitude, community, and love. And the interesting thing, is how this change has come about. The change in my perception of bowing has come not through analysis or reading or instruction, but through physical experience and presence to myself and others while bowing.
I mentioned earlier that I have been bowing over the past year and that I've been bowing a lot. These are the bows that I have been doing.  I bow to the person who stays to clean my dishes as I walk away to enjoy my Saturday. I bow to the doorwatch for standing while we sit. I bow to the server who picks up my spilled rice. I bow to the person who sits across from me in the zendo. I bow to the people in my small group at the Full Moon Ceremony after they share their fears and effort over the past month. I bow and smile to my friends when we get to see each other and talk. And I bow to them when they  listen and let me be sad. And I bow to the feet, the robes, the jeans, the clogs, the physical embodiment of all the people at the Zen Center. All this time I have been bowing and bowing and bowing and now bowing means something completely different to me, just by bowing over and over and over again and feeling how I feel when I bow.
To me, this is the most interesting part. Because there are a lot of things, (and there are a lot of people) in this life, that I'm not so much a fan of. There are things that I avoid, that I judge, that I dismiss because they make me uncomfortable or because I don't see value in them. I guess this is part of life, to have these feelings about these things. But then I think about bowing, and how much I now cherish its act and how I used to not have it in my life because of my perceptions around it. And that makes me start to wonder about some other things. About how those things that I am so sure I don't want, that I don't need, that cause me such discomfort...well, maybe they're like bowing too. I don't know, maybe it's a stretch, but also maybe, if I start to just experience them, try to be present with them without my perceptions and associations, maybe they'll turn out to be something I cherish too. Either way, I feel like I might be missing something by not experiencing those things that I seem to dislike so much, that maybe they have something to offer me too.