I’ve decided that people never actually know one another. The cliché epiphany came to me just a few days ago as I sat on a bench near the Ocean in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. I had been reading for quite a while when my attention was caught by a woman walking with her son from the pier to the beach itself. Admittedly, the reason my attention was diverted from my enthralling piece of literature (Xenocide from the Ender’s Game series if anyone is wondering) was the fact that this woman was exceptionally attractive, but while her face and features caught my attention, it was something else entirely that kept it…she was looking at me.
Shortly after the exchange the woman had gone one her way, but I was stuck. Thinking. Why had we both lingered so long in our looking? What was so perturbing about this wordless dialogue that kept me from returning to my paperback escape? In a word: Sunglasses.
Only a day prior to my brother and I making the drive down to where we were staying, my family spent a day shopping, and, in the course of said personally-justified-expenditure-outing, we made a stop to visit my cousin at her upscale/designer clothing workplace. After my family took the place by storm (sort of like a fifth-grade class storms a museum), I was looking at the case in the store dedicated to the Ray Ban sunglasses that they carried. Since a few months before, I had been semi-shopping for a replacement to the last pair of expensive eyewear I had owned , when I saw the pair that ended my search. They were gold-framed (not too gaudy though), lightweight, modified-aviator style, Ray Bans, aka perfect. As far as I was concerned, if these bad-boys were on my face I could paint the Mona Lisa, conceive the Theory of General Relativity, solve world hunger, and do it with enough raw sexuality to end up on the cover of Rolling Stone. Needless to say, $125.00 later ($96.53 with my cousin’s discount mwahahah!!) my need to stylishly block out the pesky rays of the sun was satisfied.
Anyway, all that to say, it occurred to me sitting on that bench that the only thing the woman on the pier and I had clearly in common was the fact that we looked at one another through the lenses of our sunglasses. It also occurred to me, that at least part of the reason our gazes remained as long as they did was because neither of us could see the other’s eyes. We saw the direction those lenses were pointed, felt the presence of intentional observation, but never saw pupils dilate and focus, never saw the embarrassed diversion of attention after being caught, never really saw each other at all. The reason we kept it up was in part because of the anonymity, but also out of vain curiosity. The woman kept looking to confirm that I was looking at her, I kept looking to see if she resented my interest.
Not to sound too ethereal or broad, but I think that’s the way all our relationships are. Instead of spending money we don’t have on an expensive set of frames and lenses, we spend energy, time, and emotion on a shiny exterior trying to convince the people around us that they want to keep looking. Even when we decide to keep looking, to start a relationship, to make a commitment, the only way we know of love is by watching as the object of our attention shows the willingness to walk barefoot toward us on the pier, ignoring the splinters from the uneven boards, and finally, as we embrace, from the pressure on our faces from lenses pressed together, hoping to see behind the silvery, darkened covering of our partial honesty and incomplete descriptions about who we are. The only way we know that one another in the end is through knowing ourselves. Just as I knew that the woman was looking at me, because of the similarity of her body language to mine, the visible pause when her eyes passed in my direction, we can understand the shades that color each other’s paradigms of thought, only by remembering how it felt to look through the same color, the same problems, the same upbringing, the same lenses.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m very analytical. I love figuring out the “why?” in everyone I see, and I’m very good at it. Now, I’m not some stalker or personality profiler, I analyze without volitional involvement most of the time, so don’t misunderstand my meaning, but by and large, my speculations about people very closely resemble the truth, uncomfortably so for some of the people that ask about my assumptions. However, I notice that when I hold up the mirror of my conjectures for people to look at themselves with, often there is a relief, a peace that people find in them. Even if the mirror presents a harsh reflection, if it’s true, people are happy to look into it. I would venture to say that most relationships are based on, more or less, people finding someone who holds up to them a pleasant reflection…someone whose lenses show them that all their endeavors to be attractive, all their spent energy and emotion has created the beautiful form they hoped for. Perhaps all of our searching for the perfect mate, the fairy tale, the “one” is simply the Narcissus in us all looking for the right pool to lay down beside. Perhaps our search reflects not on their worth, but on the worth they ascribe to us. It’s a terrible, unromantic contemplation indeed, but maybe not so far from the truth. Thankfully, true love is unselfish and is not this way.
The analyst in me loves to tear things like this apart in rhetoric, but at the end of the day I must also look at things reassembled. Love is not merely an exercise of posturing and self-absorption, not true love anyway. As a Christian, much of my understanding of love comes through the understanding of the person of Jesus Christ. One of the things in my faith that I struggle the most with is accepting the notion of unconditional love, because besides the written account of Jesus’ life, I’ve never seen such a thing. Still, my intuitive leap on the beach side bench gives me a fine clue.
Maybe the reason that Christ demanded so often that we forget ourselves, our ego, our infatuation with self, is not some dogmatic, hard-handed call to self-denial, but rather that he wishes us to come to him not looking for another pleasant mirror but, on the contrary, to look into his eyes and see the kindness, the mercy, the acceptance, dare I say the love that he would ascribe value and honor to us with. Maybe, just maybe, when Christ bid us “die to ourselves daily” he simply meant “take off your sunglasses”.
As I said before, I’m good at figuring out the “why?” in people. It may be arrogance that tells me I’m right about this. It’s hope that makes me want to believe it..
Only a day prior to my brother and I making the drive down to where we were staying, my family spent a day shopping, and, in the course of said personally-justified-expenditure-outing, we made a stop to visit my cousin at her upscale/designer clothing workplace. After my family took the place by storm (sort of like a fifth-grade class storms a museum), I was looking at the case in the store dedicated to the Ray Ban sunglasses that they carried. Since a few months before, I had been semi-shopping for a replacement to the last pair of expensive eyewear I had owned , when I saw the pair that ended my search. They were gold-framed (not too gaudy though), lightweight, modified-aviator style, Ray Bans, aka perfect. As far as I was concerned, if these bad-boys were on my face I could paint the Mona Lisa, conceive the Theory of General Relativity, solve world hunger, and do it with enough raw sexuality to end up on the cover of Rolling Stone. Needless to say, $125.00 later ($96.53 with my cousin’s discount mwahahah!!) my need to stylishly block out the pesky rays of the sun was satisfied.
Anyway, all that to say, it occurred to me sitting on that bench that the only thing the woman on the pier and I had clearly in common was the fact that we looked at one another through the lenses of our sunglasses. It also occurred to me, that at least part of the reason our gazes remained as long as they did was because neither of us could see the other’s eyes. We saw the direction those lenses were pointed, felt the presence of intentional observation, but never saw pupils dilate and focus, never saw the embarrassed diversion of attention after being caught, never really saw each other at all. The reason we kept it up was in part because of the anonymity, but also out of vain curiosity. The woman kept looking to confirm that I was looking at her, I kept looking to see if she resented my interest.
Not to sound too ethereal or broad, but I think that’s the way all our relationships are. Instead of spending money we don’t have on an expensive set of frames and lenses, we spend energy, time, and emotion on a shiny exterior trying to convince the people around us that they want to keep looking. Even when we decide to keep looking, to start a relationship, to make a commitment, the only way we know of love is by watching as the object of our attention shows the willingness to walk barefoot toward us on the pier, ignoring the splinters from the uneven boards, and finally, as we embrace, from the pressure on our faces from lenses pressed together, hoping to see behind the silvery, darkened covering of our partial honesty and incomplete descriptions about who we are. The only way we know that one another in the end is through knowing ourselves. Just as I knew that the woman was looking at me, because of the similarity of her body language to mine, the visible pause when her eyes passed in my direction, we can understand the shades that color each other’s paradigms of thought, only by remembering how it felt to look through the same color, the same problems, the same upbringing, the same lenses.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m very analytical. I love figuring out the “why?” in everyone I see, and I’m very good at it. Now, I’m not some stalker or personality profiler, I analyze without volitional involvement most of the time, so don’t misunderstand my meaning, but by and large, my speculations about people very closely resemble the truth, uncomfortably so for some of the people that ask about my assumptions. However, I notice that when I hold up the mirror of my conjectures for people to look at themselves with, often there is a relief, a peace that people find in them. Even if the mirror presents a harsh reflection, if it’s true, people are happy to look into it. I would venture to say that most relationships are based on, more or less, people finding someone who holds up to them a pleasant reflection…someone whose lenses show them that all their endeavors to be attractive, all their spent energy and emotion has created the beautiful form they hoped for. Perhaps all of our searching for the perfect mate, the fairy tale, the “one” is simply the Narcissus in us all looking for the right pool to lay down beside. Perhaps our search reflects not on their worth, but on the worth they ascribe to us. It’s a terrible, unromantic contemplation indeed, but maybe not so far from the truth. Thankfully, true love is unselfish and is not this way.
The analyst in me loves to tear things like this apart in rhetoric, but at the end of the day I must also look at things reassembled. Love is not merely an exercise of posturing and self-absorption, not true love anyway. As a Christian, much of my understanding of love comes through the understanding of the person of Jesus Christ. One of the things in my faith that I struggle the most with is accepting the notion of unconditional love, because besides the written account of Jesus’ life, I’ve never seen such a thing. Still, my intuitive leap on the beach side bench gives me a fine clue.
Maybe the reason that Christ demanded so often that we forget ourselves, our ego, our infatuation with self, is not some dogmatic, hard-handed call to self-denial, but rather that he wishes us to come to him not looking for another pleasant mirror but, on the contrary, to look into his eyes and see the kindness, the mercy, the acceptance, dare I say the love that he would ascribe value and honor to us with. Maybe, just maybe, when Christ bid us “die to ourselves daily” he simply meant “take off your sunglasses”.
As I said before, I’m good at figuring out the “why?” in people. It may be arrogance that tells me I’m right about this. It’s hope that makes me want to believe it..
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