seeing you

"to be impelled to prove your masculinity through flat denials of your anxieties (fraid a nothing had been your motto as a child) and bold lies about your exploits. to be forced to practice the most severe economy in your attempts to "render" your life artistically, because your capital of self-understanding was too small to permit you to be expansive and your feat of self-exposure too powerful. to make a virtue of necessity by packing troubled feelings below the surface of your stories like dynamite beneath a bridge. to be tempted by your enormous ambition into writing a novel, despite the risks inherent in amplitude...." -- excerpt from hemingway by kenneth s. lynn

ernest hemingway's mother thought him lazy, not using his potential and spiritually wayward. f. scott fitzgerald wrote that his friend had not been fully recognized for his genius. some saw him as a great swimmer, outdoorsmen, irrestably charming, a vibrant literary giant. others as arrogant, manipulative, backstabbing and cruel.

what does it take to see someone without our own glasses fogged and smudged? what conclusions we easily make when viewing one slice of a personality? it is rather hard to see someone else. probably impossible to fully see as each of us is in continual change and motion. but to see, even a little, of who we really are, would it make us better, make them better? or would it bring disillusionment complete. or greater fear?

do we want to see?
i'd answer yes, most especially to the faces that immediately come to mind, even to many beyond my circle and those who have little time for me and me for them.

and yet, sometimes viewing inside ourselves and inside of others can be quite terrifying. or...perhaps not, perhaps instead, it is the remarkable reminder of our need for more than ourselves.