Our responsibility to one another

On seeing and being seen

What I remember the most from around age 10 until I was 21 was an overwhelming feeling of loneliness.

That’s not to say there weren’t pockets of great joy and connection during that time. I was loved by a wonderful family. I grew friendships that still sustain me today, fell in love for the first time, discovered the places where my passion burned.

But I lived every day with the sense that I was not making myself known to others in the ways I hoped they would know me. It was as if every person I hoped to reach stood on the other side of a sheet of plexiglass, smiling and waving and offering their hand to place against mine through the surface. But the intimation of intimacy is almost more painful than none at all. And I felt so frustrated by my inability to give and get what I needed to feel comfortable.

That discomfort has profoundly shaped how I interact with other people every day. Because I hope through one step, one look, one gesture, one word, I can let someone know that they are being seen, even on the smallest scale of who they are. Every one deserves to feel their humanness acknowledged by someone else.

I’ve been thinking a lot about community and the present day and if there’s any way we can claw ourselves back to a society comprised of people who see one another. Or if that society ever existed in the first place. These same anxieties are abundant in the many conversations, both public and private, about why things are, just, *like this*.

I learned to make myself seen by truly seeing myself for the first time. I’d spent so long chasing the high of feeling wanted that I neglected to notice how I’d never spent much time with myself. I have no way of killing this cliche but I went through my first heartbreak and suddenly had more time alone than I’d ever had in my life and I finally learned how to be a person who could share equally in love. That journey felt like finally integrating the person I wanted to be and the person I was showing to the world. Suddenly, I was capable of letting people in. Plexiglass shattered.

Two years ago, I met my friend Jay for the first time in a coffee shop in Des Moines and started getting to know one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. Jay is a Black, gay man from Wisconsin, and I think one of the first things I asked him was why he chose Iowa of all places, a place I thought my idea of Jay would never want to live.

But I’ve learned that northern Wisconsin has profoundly shaped Jay’s sense of self. That Jay’s sense of self is rooted in integrity and a drive to create the world he wants, both for himself and others. There’s a kindness in the way he lets other people show up as they are. He loves basketball. And he’s incredibly funny.

I think we’ve forgotten we have a responsibility to the world to put in that effort of truly opening ourselves to one another. What we innately want is balance in how we come to our relationships, a 50/50 exchange of desire to build joy together in whatever form that takes. While some of us might show up too much, too many of us aren’t showing up at all, retreating away into our phones and our homes and our discomfort with a life unseen.

We’ve forgotten that showing up is the easiest part.

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