Awareness of others (post sesshin)

I've definitely noticed that I have an increased awareness of others since sesshin. I guess it makes sense because I was, basically, living, breathing, sitting, and working with all the other people in sesshin, for 16 hours a day. Physically being in such close quarters, during such a sort of intimate experience, seems to have saturated me with a natural inclination to be aware of and present to those around me. This kind of embodiment of awareness of others, combined with some insights to my self and my habits (as a result of a class I took with Lien) helped me to notice, and interrupt, a mistreatment of another human being and her daughter.
I was rushing from MUNI to BART in order to make it to a class at EBMC on time. I swiped my Clipper card at the BART turnstile and started to run toward the escalator in the hopes of somehow catching the BART train that had left 3 minutes ago. As I ran past a woman and her daughter I stopped, because I noticed something. I noticed that if that woman and her daughter were different than who they were, I wouldn't have passed them. I would have slowed down, given them space, and respected that they were a mother and her daughter and I had no right to rush past them. I would have treated them as equals or, even more, as someone not to disturb, challenge, or inconvenience.
When I say 'if a woman and her daughter were different than who they were' I am referring to my perception of who they were based on my habits around all kinds of signifiers in our society: class, race, attire, etc. I suppose I could describe this woman and her daughter, but I think the more important thing was that I had placed a value on them, that I felt comfortable treating them as 'less than,' that I was comfortable asserting my needs over theirs and, most importantly, I knew that I wouldn't have done this if I perceived them in a different way. My perceptions about who they were weren't just stereotypes or labels, they were actual value statements that allowed me to treat them as something less than myself.
This is not a lovely thing to discover about yourself. It's also not something new to my awareness of myself, I've been studying my patterns around race, class, etc. for almost ten years now. But, this time, it wasn't just a study of myself. I actually saw what I was doing and stopped. And it was different too. In the past, when I learned about my perceptions and assumptions of others, it stayed in this concept of "other." Like, I notice that I make assuptions about this group of people or I notice that I tend to act this way around this group of people.
But on Tuesday, when I saw this mother and her daughter, what stopped me was that I knew that they were the same as me, that they were equals to me, that I wasn't treating them with the respect that every human being deserves.
And maybe that's what made me stop- whereas in the past I would have just brushed past them, noticed it and did it anyway, and just felt guilty about it later. Maybe it's this awareness that we really all are a part of a community, that we actually aren't any different from each other. I don't really know what made me stop but I do know that I didn't have a choice. I physically stopped- my treatment of them was absolutely the most important thing at that moment. I didn't even consider how much later I would be for the BART. I just needed to slow down, to give them the space that they deserve in this world.

I don't know if it will happen again but if this is the after effect of sesshin, or of a year at the zen center, or classes at the zen center, or the practice period... whatever it is that made my natural inclination to be to treat absolute strangers with respect and dignity, I just, I don't know, this is bigger than I thought it was. In some ways, I feel like I have a responsibility to continue, that in knowing that this is the effect of whatever it is that I'm doing, I can't not do it. It wouldn't be fair to live my life the way I did before, unaware of things, treating people as "others." I don't know. I guess I'll just be in the zendo tomorrow morning for sure...