To be seen

 

"I see you, as a fundamentally flawed human being, I see your pain, your angst, your passions, your frustrations, your struggles. I see you trying, I know you are, pushing through your obstacles. I see you through your swallowed lines and blurred statements, through your dimmed eyes and troubles sentences. I see you through your contradicted emotions and  long silences, through your scattered attention and kept distances.

I see you, not as fantasy I keep in my head, and paint as I please, but as a physical and emotional presence, a human being trying to be human, fit in and survive.

I see you, as flawed as you are, as unlovable and not enough as you think you might be, as crushed and invisible you thing you might be, I still see you.

You are a person, I see you, and I accept you."

 

The thing is, we all thrive to be seen, not observed, but seen, and we practice this desire through everything we do, the moment we wake up. It's through our clothes, words, silly jokes, movements, and ironically enough, even when we try our best to hide, and blend with the crowd and disappear eventually, we have this deep urge to be seen, rather than being perceived. We thrive for acceptance and to be told that it's okay to be human, it's okay to feel like a mess, we don't have to figure it all out at once. We desperately try to free ourselves from everybody's version of us, because we KNOW that this is not us, you do not see me, you just choose to perceive me in a certain way.

And when our desperate attempts doom to fail, we fall into the arms of art, we snuggle between the comfort of books, cinema, music, or any form of art really, or we immerse ourselves in creation, projecting what we'd like to be seen as on a white canvas.

When an artist does the most absurd, crazy, avant-garde, unorthodox thing with his art, obsessed with self expression, he is screaming to the world : I EXIST , AND I'D LIKE TO BE SEEN !

We all want to be seen, as a person that exists, and individual from the crowd, and be accepted,with no disappointed and judgemental eyes, we just want for our helpless attempts at survival and struggles to be recognized, to be held carefully and kindly and be told : I see you.

“I see you.” That’s the last thing she said to me. “I see you.” Not a statement of judgment or disappointment, just acceptance and the simple recognition of another person in a room. “Hello there. You are a person. And I see you.”
-Bojack horseman.