Peekaboo

I see you. Do you see me? Ahh, I remember that game well. My three little birds bouncing on my knee and giggling their asses off with this cute diversion. Seemingly simpler times when you could easily make them laugh and they actually enjoyed getting tickled. If I tried that today with my boy I'd end up on the other side of the room nursing bruises I'm sure.

But as you can imagine, this ain't about that. The game of peekaboo we play in our daily lives, with loved ones and strangers alike. People float in and out of our lives on a daily basis and one gets to wondering about what others actually see. I mean the real thing, not if my hair is parted correctly or if I have the right pair of shoes on, the real me. Or the real you.

A friend had recently posted something on Facebook about the word sonder, with the following explanation:

"the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, 

as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk."

That's cool, I like that something that should be innate to us has been captured in such a way. Of course all those people are living their lives as we pass them on the streets, their hopes and fears, their struggles and triumphs. We'd do well to remember that before passing judgement or acting out of some notion of one upmanship. As a society we don't really see people. And while that is bad enough, what's worse is when that happens for people you actually care about.

Our self worth is a delicate thing. The smallest seemingly insignificant comment or look can burn right through us. Scarring us in ways that can be hard to imagine. Anxiety born from malice or not is still painful. It can be a hard thing to pinpoint and just when you think you have it all figured out, the goal posts get moved and you realize you don't know shit. I'm talking about how we value ourselves and how we love ourselves. It has to start there, with ourselves.

As unique as we all are the answers are just as unique. What works for me doesn't have to work for you and often it doesn't. We struggle mightily and sometimes when blessed with someone that truly sees you and values you we still will think the worse. "It's happened before so I'm sure it will happen again, so why bother." Sound familiar?

If only you could see yourself as I do. There is beauty and power there. Wrapped up in a perfectly imperfect package. If only you could see what I see. Your good heart shielded by past hurt. Your tenderness tempered by the tapestry of your life. If only you could see what I see you'd see that you have real worth and you matter greatly.

Let yourself go. Lose yourself in love so that you can find yourself. There, at the ends of your fingertips we have it, we just need to believe.

"And in the end

The love you take

Is equal to the love you make"

The Beatles