seeing

you know how it goes.
a conversation starts, you walk into it not knowing what you're about
to enter, and before you can blink, you've hit territory that hits other
territory that hits things inside of you that are raw.

and by the time you're done, your insides are churned right on up.

oh yeah.
while it doesn't happen often - thank goodness- when it happens,
things get mixed up and emotions run wild.

i saw all this goin' on with me and decided it was the perfect time to go mow the lawn.
i'll go mow, and think.
sort thru it.
get it out of me.

and i actually bought that plan.

here's the first point i wanted to make -
i (and i'm thinking i'm not the only one) can certainly fool myself with the best of 'em.
for pete's sake.
i didn't go out to mow and think.
i went out to mow and run away from it.

but um.....it wasn't til hours and hours later that i figured this out.

and when i did, i just shook my head.

of course.

and i had been runnin' all day.
i can tell when my eating habits start to slide down hill.
running.

so the first point is the fooling ourselves. the telling ourselves we're doin' one thing,
when truly, we certainly are not. i think we can do that a fair amount.

which brings me to my second point -

seeing clearly. (both others AND ourselves)

i think one of the most heartbreaking things in life is the non-seeing of each other
that happens so often.

the making others what we want them to be, and choosing not to see who they really are.
and the desperation in people who know they're not seen, and the reactions they have
to that.

the reactions can be so intense.
all the way to suicide.

when i got to thinking about all this, i wanted to just shout out to the world -
'let's work on seeing each other! it matters!'

but then i got to thinking more.
ya know what?
a whole lotta people come from families that will never see them.
they have parents that won't ever know them or appreciate them for who they are.

they just won't.
and i can shout my heart out right in front of the faces of those families, and it won't make
one shred of difference.

sometimes you just don't get what you're looking for from other people.

sometimes you just don't.

but then you gotta sit yourself down and hold that for a bit. and then know that
the place you gotta find it is in yourself.

that's not some trite hallmark commercial or something like that.

it's really the deal.
and i got to thinking about that shouting i wanted to do.

THAT'S what i want to shout -

it's up to US o see who WE are.
it's up to US to value who WE are.
it's up to US.

that's where we gotta start.

and if we're very very lucky, we'll find our tribe who will stand right beside us
and see and value us as deeply as we do.

but i'm not sure we can get that until we do the seeing first - or at least get
the process rolling.

so...the shouting about seeing each other and it matters?
let's just tweak that.....to shouting about seeing ourselves and that mattering so darn much.

we can spend our lives desperately hoping certain other people will see us,
and reacting when they don't.

or we can start seeing ourselves for who we really are.
we can give ourselves what we're longing for.
and somehow in doing that, i think we find other things/people that we
didn't even know were there.

when i finally stopped running and sat myself down to look at the whirlwind
inside of me, that's what i found.

and when i figured that out, i went off to take care of a few things that needed
taking care of.

cause when we hold our power, it changes things.