If you do not know what I mean by this, or if you do not think seeing others seeing you is a formative part of life, let’s quickly imagine another scene, one as simplified as Sean and university: You are twelve years old and you go home with a bad grade on a test or, if you like, a good grade on your test.
You tell dad you got an “F.”
Do you see him seeing you with shame and thus feel humiliated or do you see him seeing you with love and feel O.K.?
You tell Mom you got an “A.”
She says “good job” but you see in her eyes that this “A” is still not good enough. Or that’s what you imagine you see and now you wonder if there is anything you can do to impress her.
Let’s even extend the script of this second scenario a bit . . . perhaps you are so desperate to see mom see you with approval that nothing she does will ever make you feel the pride and love you want to feel. You have become convinced mom is never going to give you the praise you deserve so that just like the friend who looks at Sean with too much pity or jealousy you look to your mom with more need and desperation than makes sense.
Indeed, maybe you are lucky enough to get a clue of your own needs when you go home with a friend. You tell mom about your “A,” and then complain to your friend that your mom never celebrates your accomplishments. Now your friend says, in surprise, “really, she smiled and said ‘good job’ and I sure wish my mom would do that about my accomplishments.”
You see something absent in how your mom sees you and react with longing to this absence and yet your friend sees her seeing you with surplus.
As an audience member to your drama–a ghost–your friend suggests that the problem might not be in how your mom is there, seeing you as never good enough, but rather in how you see her seeing you.
For the sake of example, these scenarios are reductive and obviously no single such moment shapes us forever. But such moments shape who we “are,” how we see, and how we see ourselves being seen. No wonder our being re-known in one moment is shaped by how we have been known in another moment, or all other moments.
Despite how many steps I am building into this drama you know there are actually many more, since all of this happens at the speed of light and since it happens through the prism of imagination too.
For surely as you go home with that “F” or that “A” and before you tell Dad or Mom about your grade you also imagine how they will react, how they will see you. You may imagine with great fear your dad’s scowl or with desperate hope your mom’s smile. You are so in your drama, imagining it, that whatever happens may be secondary or unbelievable.
Your friend says, “Wow, I did not see your mom that way” but your imagination of what you feared or what you hoped for as you walked home with your test informed (or pre-informed) your reality to such a degree that now you doubt your friend. Are they failing to see what you see or were their eyes just not colored by the same imagination as were yours? They, to say it again, just know your parents where as you re-know them. Andt this point, who has a better hold on the reality of the mom or dad who is there? You or your friend?