Seeing Oneself

Seeing Oneself

Samuel Bird

I opened my eyes before the dawn as my mind cranked into action thinking about those same concerns it always did. How was I going to get the resources I needed to survive in a world that seemed to protest such? Furthermore, how was I going to traverse the social world that I increasingly understand, that I simply don’t understand, to get the resources I need. The list of things I am desperate to acquire now includes more than food, but also to find a people to belong to and one person to become a part of. I racked my head to figure out how the funds that were enough to pay for a single meal had lasted me two weeks, and were to last me another four days. I sat down and utilized my finance degree to do the basic math of what needs were most needed when I finally received the well needed funds. I balanced out what I had, and what I owed. I was surprised to see that the net worth of my estate was more than I had mentally estimated. Though I was still no closer to getting away from the large bag of cheap rice that had kept me alive over the past year, I felt my struggles were amounting to something. I wish someone could see me. I wonder if they would be proud of how I was handling such a dire circumstance. I would want them to have the context of me fighting that same battle of poverty over the past dozen years alone. Every single reasonable thing I could think about to not want for food had failed, leaving me with that same fight I have had since I was six years old of finding where my next meal would come from. I wished someone could see my life as a story. Through the course of conducting my business, one person didn’t show up, and another removed their business relationship with me. These both were disheartening seeing the fight it took to got that point. A peer was responsible for the termination of the relationship and while owning up to it, apologized. I made sure that they knew I knew the concern this presented, but that I was not mad at them. I thanked them for their honesty and all their efforts. I did something I found to of value, but I wished someone could see it. In the Christian sense, I try to do good where no one can see it, but I wish someone could see it, not simply to boost my estimation in their eye, but because I wanted to share a beautiful story. Finally, I joined my last meeting of the day to find that the opposing party had deliberately lied about their intentions and was berating my firm. They had an argument for everything, wanted me to justify everything that I did, and would not allow me to represent myself. Worse yet, the two other people in attendance ran a business far less reputable and honest than mine, but seeing as there were two of them and I have a bad habit of not being on my own side, I doubted myself. I finally had a chance to speak and said that there was a theory of language where it is explicitly saying and yet there is what it is implicitly doing. I gently placed him in a conceptual position where he had to tell me his intentions. He told me it is essentially to put me on trial. I reminded him that I did not report to him and don’t like authority, though I love to talk with people. His volume became more intense and his attacks more cutting as they were directed by his premeditated research. I hid my shaking hands from view before politely apologizing I had no solution to these series of claims that had no redemption. I thanked him for his time while being bitter mine was wasted, and I left. I was slightly shaken with how much grace I was able to muster and evaluated my response as being what I would have wanted it to be. However, I am sensitive to conflicts and personal attacks that undermine my sense of security in the world. For this reason, I was emotionally distraught for the remainder of the day. On the drive home, I saw many happy couples walking with held hands and bright smiles. A feeling of bitter jealousy welt up, but I knew I was at fault. I simply didn’t know how to remedy my dilemma. There was something that I just didn’t understand, and I suffered because of it. I knew I needed a way to end this day that would counteract, remedy it, or at least give me contrast. I sat before a sunset with a swelling and emotive piece of music. I considered my day and the larger contextual life it played a part in. I was honored to have this life, yet there was some great tragedy or injustice I felt. Who was there to see my day? Who was there to see my pain? Who was there to see my strength? Who was there to see the mess that I am, and yet not look away. If not a hand to hold, perhaps a pair of eyes next to mine. I perceive, experience, and evaluate. I now desired to not do so alone. I go so swiftly and violently in the direction I evaluate to be the best, but I have no smiling face to nod in affirmation when I turn around. With every article, thought, and direction I move, I pick it alone, experience it alone, and evaluate the outcome alone. I wish so deeply for someone to see it, to see me. It is secondary what they think of me. Firstly, I wish to be thought of. I wish to share my life with someone. This has been my great weakness: That I experience and evaluate all I do alone. However, this has perhaps also been my greatest strength. That I experience and evaluate all I do alone. I don’t have someone to observe me and with such, affirm all aspects of my being. However, no great horror can occur without some advantageous fact to those who are imaginative and opportunistic. I had no one to see me. At least, I had no one else. However, there was someone with me in that meeting, in that sunset, and all those years of stories I carry alone. That person has been at times been my friend, and at times my foe, but they have never quit seeing my life. At the very least, I see myself. 

I was only able to go to the third, fifth, and half the ninth grade in my countries schooling system. During one of these blessed times, I was privielged to learn about multiplication. The example used to illustrate was a series of rows with a given value with a corrosponding series of columns with their own value. They would then illustrate the principle by showing the cumulative amount corresponding with the multipliction of the row and column. As I began to practice doing the tables as fast as I could, I imagined a caveat. What if the row or collumn didn’t just perpetuate at the same rate, but perhaps after a row or two would gain one or perhaps a half more? Rather than a rectangle, perhaps this would be some sort of rhombus. I had accidentally stumbled on exponential growth. I then imagined if the number of row or collums was dynamic, what if added a whole new shape, making it a cube. I had a priori found the ideas I would later learn to love. It will always be a pain of mine I never could do more math as a child. What I learned after finding that outside parties had found the same method, is that there was something about the given first experience. Someone at some point had to identify a new mathematic method first. Though you may say I am not original, I could find it independant of them like Leibniz and Newton. This perception and cognition I was, could certainly be fraught, but I could not doubt every aspect of it always. At some point, it had managed to identify something. Around that same time, a dangerous and noxious compound called plastic was used to make everything that could be made including food wrapping. I found a nasty taste on that which it touched and felt an ill sensation when I breathed in the air around some that was in the sun. I was told not to be dramatic and that it was safe. I am as skeptical as they come, but if there are any things I can know empirically, I know this plastic is contrary to the human organism. Here, I should not have waited for someone to come along and nod their head. I knew what I had sensed, and trusted that sensation. I do nott need someone’s permission to think something. Later in life, I would start to make dramatic changes to my life that were never seen in sort in my family or communal habitus. I was told by many people that I was making a mistake. I craved so deeply and perhaps pathetically that someone would come along and tell me I was on the right path. I was able to detach my affirmation of the direction of my life from primarily outside forces. This artifact left from horrendous isolation made me a great leader as I didn’t wait around for direction and people loved the confidence. This is my greatest insight on how to lead others. Go as confidently as you in the best direction you can and let it be seen. I don’t need to see someone giving money to the poor to do it first. I don’t need someone to speak up that a group went too far. I am able to do all this, though I will admit I am growing weary. I am able to do this because I am able to deeply see myself. I believe in God in part because I need my soul to not be unkown to all, but I am still left an enigma that walks amongst you. What could I have been able to do has come from me being able to identify myself on my own. This can be advnatagous as others are a warped mirror to see oneself alone. I see where I need to work on this, but I see it because I am looking. I invite you to practice this deep and difficultly realized skill of seeing oneself. Be that affirming nod you need. Solve the desperation we engage with others in. Heal that part of you that atrophied from invisibility. Give yourself permission to deeply realize and understand what you percieve, evaluate and experience. This of course will be followed by greater reflection and adaptation. However, I take you back to that sunset with me. I didn’t see it and wish in that moment for a different brightness or spectrum. Sure, I did think of pollutive factors and wished I spent more time looking at sunsets. However, in this moment I was wise to behold. I could worry about what I wanted to be later, because I was honoring what was now. While there is something of value I can offer you with my life, this same awareness of self find many facts I do not value. Perhaps in my hurt of social refusal I pretend I never wanted belonging anyway to save my pride and make my misfortune seem intentional. I know I need to figure out what it is within me that keeps me from being part of a people and ask it to change. However, there is one last thing in order. I wish to thank you. The deepest of thanks that I can thank or to be thanked to you. To some degree, the effort to see myself alone is what made me philosophize. I know I write in part to become something more than an enigma that people once walked by. I seek immortality in your memories, but at the very least, from the bottom of a broken heart, thank you for seeing me. Where I can’t find you in space in time, I see myself.