I had a good friend a long time ago who was angry a lot of the time. People typically liked him and he made friends easily but he had a chip on his shoulder. You couldn’t make it through a conversation with him where he didn’t call someone else an idiot or make fun of someone for being stupid.
The persona he presented to the world was tough, arrogant and dominant.
I remember very clearly the time someone told him he had a very gentle spirit. I thought I knew him quite well by then, and that was not at all how I would have described him.
When he told me about the conversation he said, “no one ever sees that in me”. My eyebrows raised and I remember thinking how in the world could they?
But it taught me a very important lesson that no matter how we present ourselves to the world, what we really want is our most inner self to be seen.
We want other people to recognize our light, to see our super powers or gifts, and to see that we are unique.
We want to be seen.
The best way to be seen is to act accordingly to who we are on the inside.
The walls, the tough guy act, the lashing out, the rigid boundaries, the comedian and the doormat are all ways we use to hide and cover up our inner most self.
We cover it up because if someone rejects that part of us, it feels like it might kill us.
The truth is that when we express that self through vulnerability and humility, and speak from our hearts, we allow ourselves to be seen. Which is really what we wanted all along.
Everyone else wants to be seen the way you want to be seen.
The best way to see someone else is to first understand how it feels to be seen and know how much courage it takes to stop hiding.
It always starts with you.
I wish I had allowed myself to be seen when I had that friend, maybe it would have been helpful to lead by example.
It’s very hard to remain friends when you are both hiding behind personas that don’t match, and this friend and I are no longer in contact.
I think about this friend often and I wonder if I knew then what I know now if I would have responded differently in that moment…