How to see people
This entry is essentially the response I had to another friend's recent blog post. I'm going to paraphrase that here because it's not mine to repost.
In the original blog post, my friend said something to the effect that when they're together with someone else alone they understand the other person. Their friend is unique, persevering and ready to conquer the world, passionate, has big dreams, seeks truth, confident, radiant, comforting, and basically someone who they adore.
But when their friend steps out into the rest of the world and it's not just the two of them, something happens to their friend. They no longer understand them, they no longer recognize them. The attributes that were so admired before seem to be wiped away by the influence of others, in short, that when their friend steps out into the world, they become afraid to continue being who they are in solitude and that the things that were admired are not there anymore, or are simply masked and not visible to admire anymore.
My reply was as follows.
This is a great post (I say that not knowing its inspiration but then that's probably what gives it its power). You're right, it's true of everyone, even those who would say it's not. It's in our nature to try to survive life and this is one of those things that on some level we think will make survival more likely, or at least easier because we won't have to deal with all the hassles we're sure we would have if we were just who we are.
This could spark an interesting conversation, at least to me. The person in the first paragraph seems to be someone who inspires and moves you in some way. Then in the second paragraph this person seems to disappear and another takes their place. A person you don't know or recognize and thus don't understand. The truth though, I believe is something else. They are in fact the same person, the one you know and understand and who inspires and moves you as well as the one you don't recognize and don't understand.
One could see this as someone putting on a mask when venturing outside, or one could see it as two opposing sides to the same coin. I've always chosen to see it as really neither of those. I'm not sure how I would describe it exactly because I've never really tried to, but when I look at someone I see the face they put forward to the outside and I also see the face they're hiding beneath. In doing this, I recognize them both as only two parts of a greater whole.
Something I realized a few years back is that we human beings have created ourselves an elaborate framework with which to understand life, but much of that framework is a machination of our own invention. What I mean by that is that we've invented concepts to better describe and understand what we see around us. Time is one of these concepts and the thing to understand about that is that time does not exist anywhere in nature. No animal has a watch or a clock or a calendar or anything of the kind. Nothing in nature except humans live according to any schedule.
You could argue that animals by and large sleep at night and wake during the day, but some animals do the opposite. You could argue that bears hibernate in the winter and are awake the rest of the year, but other animals do not. These things which we see animals doing as part of some "schedule" have nothing at all to do with time, and have only to do with a direct reaction to nature. Were it not cold in the winter and difficult to find food, bears likely would not need to hibernate. Were it possible to hunt and capture prey the same at night as it is during the day, animals would not need to sleep or hunt at those specific "times" of the day. Human beings have created the concept of time to better understand and study and predict and respond to the natural order occuring around ourselves. There is no schedule in the universe save that which we have created in our minds.
The reason it's important to point out the above is because by recognizing that this piece of the framework by which we understand the world around us does not actually exist, we become able to think outside of that framework. To make this easier to see, think of the concept of time as merely a tool we can use when we need to work on something around us. Say we're a fisherman, in this case the concept of time is used as a tool for predicting when and where we will be able to find an abundance of fish. Another way of putting it would be to say that Rembrandt grew up doing carpentry work as a kid (I don't know artists, so bear with me here). Had he always used the tools of a carpenter and always had a hammer in one hand and a saw in the other, he would not have been able to create the artworks he is known for today. By realizing that the hammer and saw were only tools, he could set them aside and free himself to do something different.
Now having said that, we can get back to the point I was making in how I look at people and how I see their "mask" and their real face underneath as just two parts of the whole thing. When you set aside the concept of time, you can suddenly also see the beginning of someone's life, the middle of their life, and so on all the way to the end of their life as simply more parts of the greater whole. This is the way I look at people, and the way I've learned to experience them as individuals. I don't see the person before me as simply what I see in that one instant in time, but simply that instant being nothing more of the person than their eyebrow is a part of their face, and their face a part of their head, and their head a part of their body, and their body a part of their being.
If you can open yourself up to seeing and experiencing people as their whole being, you can really gain a much greater appreciation for what that being is and what it can mean to yourself, those around them, the world, and of course ultimately all of existence because once you understand that you can remove the framework and constraints of time from the way you experience a person, you can start removing all the other constraints from everything else in the universe and see that again, that individual's being is but a part of his or her environment, which is a part of the world, which is a part of the universe, which is a part of all of existence whatever that may entail.
Everything is connected, everything is a part of the rest, all of it is together whether we like it or not. Being able to look at the world and experience life from such a point of view allows for orders of magnitude greater levels of intimacy than you could ever imagine exists without knowing this point of view.
In the original blog post, my friend said something to the effect that when they're together with someone else alone they understand the other person. Their friend is unique, persevering and ready to conquer the world, passionate, has big dreams, seeks truth, confident, radiant, comforting, and basically someone who they adore.
But when their friend steps out into the rest of the world and it's not just the two of them, something happens to their friend. They no longer understand them, they no longer recognize them. The attributes that were so admired before seem to be wiped away by the influence of others, in short, that when their friend steps out into the world, they become afraid to continue being who they are in solitude and that the things that were admired are not there anymore, or are simply masked and not visible to admire anymore.
My reply was as follows.
This is a great post (I say that not knowing its inspiration but then that's probably what gives it its power). You're right, it's true of everyone, even those who would say it's not. It's in our nature to try to survive life and this is one of those things that on some level we think will make survival more likely, or at least easier because we won't have to deal with all the hassles we're sure we would have if we were just who we are.
This could spark an interesting conversation, at least to me. The person in the first paragraph seems to be someone who inspires and moves you in some way. Then in the second paragraph this person seems to disappear and another takes their place. A person you don't know or recognize and thus don't understand. The truth though, I believe is something else. They are in fact the same person, the one you know and understand and who inspires and moves you as well as the one you don't recognize and don't understand.
One could see this as someone putting on a mask when venturing outside, or one could see it as two opposing sides to the same coin. I've always chosen to see it as really neither of those. I'm not sure how I would describe it exactly because I've never really tried to, but when I look at someone I see the face they put forward to the outside and I also see the face they're hiding beneath. In doing this, I recognize them both as only two parts of a greater whole.
Something I realized a few years back is that we human beings have created ourselves an elaborate framework with which to understand life, but much of that framework is a machination of our own invention. What I mean by that is that we've invented concepts to better describe and understand what we see around us. Time is one of these concepts and the thing to understand about that is that time does not exist anywhere in nature. No animal has a watch or a clock or a calendar or anything of the kind. Nothing in nature except humans live according to any schedule.
You could argue that animals by and large sleep at night and wake during the day, but some animals do the opposite. You could argue that bears hibernate in the winter and are awake the rest of the year, but other animals do not. These things which we see animals doing as part of some "schedule" have nothing at all to do with time, and have only to do with a direct reaction to nature. Were it not cold in the winter and difficult to find food, bears likely would not need to hibernate. Were it possible to hunt and capture prey the same at night as it is during the day, animals would not need to sleep or hunt at those specific "times" of the day. Human beings have created the concept of time to better understand and study and predict and respond to the natural order occuring around ourselves. There is no schedule in the universe save that which we have created in our minds.
The reason it's important to point out the above is because by recognizing that this piece of the framework by which we understand the world around us does not actually exist, we become able to think outside of that framework. To make this easier to see, think of the concept of time as merely a tool we can use when we need to work on something around us. Say we're a fisherman, in this case the concept of time is used as a tool for predicting when and where we will be able to find an abundance of fish. Another way of putting it would be to say that Rembrandt grew up doing carpentry work as a kid (I don't know artists, so bear with me here). Had he always used the tools of a carpenter and always had a hammer in one hand and a saw in the other, he would not have been able to create the artworks he is known for today. By realizing that the hammer and saw were only tools, he could set them aside and free himself to do something different.
Now having said that, we can get back to the point I was making in how I look at people and how I see their "mask" and their real face underneath as just two parts of the whole thing. When you set aside the concept of time, you can suddenly also see the beginning of someone's life, the middle of their life, and so on all the way to the end of their life as simply more parts of the greater whole. This is the way I look at people, and the way I've learned to experience them as individuals. I don't see the person before me as simply what I see in that one instant in time, but simply that instant being nothing more of the person than their eyebrow is a part of their face, and their face a part of their head, and their head a part of their body, and their body a part of their being.
If you can open yourself up to seeing and experiencing people as their whole being, you can really gain a much greater appreciation for what that being is and what it can mean to yourself, those around them, the world, and of course ultimately all of existence because once you understand that you can remove the framework and constraints of time from the way you experience a person, you can start removing all the other constraints from everything else in the universe and see that again, that individual's being is but a part of his or her environment, which is a part of the world, which is a part of the universe, which is a part of all of existence whatever that may entail.
Everything is connected, everything is a part of the rest, all of it is together whether we like it or not. Being able to look at the world and experience life from such a point of view allows for orders of magnitude greater levels of intimacy than you could ever imagine exists without knowing this point of view.