Seeing and Being Seen

There is an antidote to the plague of separation that seems to assail everyone in western industrial culture. Isolation is optional, not so much a product of having the invisibility cloak (see an earlier Slow Lane) thrown over one, as much as a choice to be seen. Visibility, and social isolation, are aided and abetted by decisions we ourselves make, by developmental conditions we foster, as we assume or avoid responsibility for ourselves. Isolation is as much self-imposed as it is a product of the culture we live in. Nobody is really a victim of a society caught-up in individualism. Responsibility for separation, for social isolation, for depressive ennui, is personal: resting upon how well one sees and allows themselves to be seen. Here’s what I mean.

If it is true that community conveys a personal sense of connection, which I think it does, then being known, which is how a personal sense of connection evolves, is a matter of being seen, and I would stipulate, of seeing. The bonding that is the hallmark of communal intimacy is composed of the same ingredients in a lower intensity, than those that determine social isolation and separation. By this I mean, that seeing and being seen are two of the common ingredients that determine how well we are known. So what? Why does that matter? It doesn’t, unless we want to evolve socially. The future of our kind might depend upon an increasing ability to see and be seen.

Seeing is in part a product of personal development. It is more than simply not being caught in the social trance that puts blinders on most of us. Being seen is a personal responsibility. It is more than a product of other’s blindness; it is a willingness to be transparent. Both of them take development, time to ripen, and enormous responsibility for self and other. They are the by-product benefits of community and solitude.

Seeing evolves. Every step along the arc of development involves beholding a larger, more complex and more complete picture. It literally takes a while for the eyes to adjust. What happens is that the eyes adjust to a more nuanced world and who we are, gets to be discovered as more nuanced too. Others become more vivid. Seeing becomes, the world changes, and what one may not want to see grows visible. Life gets livelier, wilder and more mysterious. Uncertainty flowers.

This all happens whether one likes it or not, and it all asks each of us if we are going to be part of the world we see? Or, if we are going to shut our eyes and imagine we are in another world that we believe we can handle? The choice is ours. But the implications go far beyond us. That is the hell, the communal responsibility, which often makes us chose blindness, and contributes to an ethos of not seeing and separation. Seeing stops when each of us chooses how much we are willing to see.

My family and I used to have a joke, we were seasick because we saw too much. The joke, of course was on us, because our actual sickness, how separated we felt, was our unwillingness to see what lay before and within us. So much was left unseen, including whole aspects of ourselves, and each other.

This is a good place to segue into the responsibility each of us has for being seen. It’s evident now that being seen has an inner component as well as an external one. If we are refusing to see in some way, then we are unlikely to see ourselves very accurately, and unable to make ourselves accurately known. Our chosen blindness contributes to the  social blindness around us, and insures the invisibility of lots of the world. It also disables us

Freedom, the chance to be oneself, the greater chance to discover one’s true nature, to know how connected one is, to even know something of that “larger something” one is connected with, and defined by, rests completely in the frightening capacity to make oneself seen. When one lets go of holding oneself hostage, then one arrives fully in the world, becoming visible. Such availability exposes one to the myopia of others. Being available to be seen can be painful and disappointing, but these are the conditions that make being seen possible. Freedom to be oneself comes with the sometimes painful responsibility of being scrutinized. 

Being seen is a choice. It is a form of exposure that populates the world with diversity and insures that real connection can take place. Community, which provides the prospect of truly being known, thrives on this kind of self-exposure. This choice isn’t the standard cultural activity, it is a preciously rare form of social activism. Choosing to be seen, standing out, is a courageous choice, especially when one actually sees the complexity of this world. Community is an antidote, a balm in an avalanche of  separation, but one that can only offer being known, to the degree of seeing and being seen, that is being practiced.