The hard conversation with a loved one comes to an impasse. A welter of feelings resolves into one overriding pain: I don’t feel seen. In the end the greatest suffering is to be, or feel, alone. And to feel unseen is the very heart of loneliness.

Josef Pieper significantly emphasized that we are ‘made to see,’ but it is just as true that we are made to be seen. Now it is more straightforward, and I think more fitting, to seek to see than to seek to be seen. Seeing is more directly in my power, though both seeing and being seen require much of me, including a willingness to receive something that cannot simply be ‘taken.’

When studying friendship I ask my students: how many people really know you? The more one considers the question the more bracing the answer. Aristotle with characteristic understatement notes that it takes a long time to get to know someone. We reasonably wonder and can reflect on this great issue: what does it take for people really to see one another. For who they are.

Aristotle distinguishes lesser relationships called ‘friendship’ from true friendship—the relationship in which is the only real answer to loneliness. Thomas Aquinas captures the key distinguishing feature in the lesser relationships: “They do not love their friend for what he is in himself but for what is incidental to him.” Key examples of what is ‘incidental’ to me is that I am ‘useful’ or ‘pleasant’ to others.

So much of the drama of human life and happiness is captured in this point. Often, indeed very often, relationships are based not so much on who someone really is but on something ‘incidental.’ What is incidental is still something true about me. This is why these aspects can ground a real relationship of some sort. The other people (i.e., my ‘friends’) do know something true about me, and presumably I know something true about them.

But again I ask, what does it take really to see a person for who he really is? And then to love him for who he is? What does it take to see beyond those true and very appealing but less important aspects of people? Words tend to fail here in conveying the seriousness of this drama. Yet to the one for whom life circumstances suddenly bring home an experience of not-being-seen-and-loved-for-who-I-am, this takes on a palpable and unforgettable seriousness.

All of us will experience this in varying degrees in our human relationships. Fortunately, this could have the fruit of our wondering, and seeking, and turning upward. Are there eyes that truly are all-seeing? Do these Eyes see me. Do they really understand me in my hidden depths; and still love me?

If by the grace of those Eyes we make such an astounding and life-changing discovery, this should not occasion our giving up or turning away from the human, sometimes all-too-human eyes in our life. Quite the contrary. Those Eyes prompt us to turn again to human eyes. Indeed, those Eyes have made their presence known to us through human eyes whose vision, though imperfect and even marred, has a part in, yeah conveys the vision of those Eyes.

How I see the persons around me is more in my power than how they see me. Maybe, when I feel unseen it is then most important that I look outward at others, that I renew my effort to see them better. Lord, that I might see. Them. Even now.

Perhaps, just perhaps, by a magic far beyond my imagining, it is then that I become more visible to others. Or, it is then I finally realize just how seen I am. Just how very not alone I am. ~ ~ ~

TODAY’S NEW PODCAST: MUSIC IN THE HOME: TROJAN HORSE or GENUINE GIFT. Join Sofia and me in a hard-hitting discussion of how the music we listen to can be either life-giving or death-dealing for us and our family.

Announcing Man of the Household and Woman of the Household special sessions for Lent. INFO AND SIGNUP HERE. Do it alone; do it as a couple; do it with friends. We hope you can join us.

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