I recently published an essay on Steven Spielberg’s film Disclosure Day in which I speak about how this film, apparently about aliens, is really about how we learn to see one another—how we look at each other with compassion.
In the piece, I also explore how the Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar praised this ability and particularly the capacity to “see behind faces,” to sense what’s really going on in someone’s heart-and-mind.
The essay recently appeared as a guest post in Kathleen Norris & Gareth Higgins’s Soul Telegram, where you can read it if you sign up for a free trial: Going Deeper with DISCLOSURE DAY
But it will also be appearing for free in the online magazine The Porch and I’ll share the link for that once it’s available.
In any case, as I was writing it, it occurred to me to share something extra with you here: an interview I did with a wonderful painter, Pam Ingalls, on the very same topic.
Pam has learned to see deeply each face she has painted and articulates her experience with beauty and candor. She speaks, for instance, about the art of seeing the depths of each person she meets, what it can feel like to be truly seen, and how a good poem changes you.
I invite you to take a peek here:
My own life has been shaped profoundly by moments in which I was suddenly and deeply seen. One of them happened not long after I returned from my first two-and-a-half year stay in South India.
I’d gone to visit a dear friend and mentor of mine, Gustavo Esteva, in southern Mexico, and was enjoying a meal that his companion Nicole had prepared for us. It was a day or two before my departure and Gustavo asked, “So, now that your time in India has come to a close, what are you going to do next?”
I was still in my twenties, and still very much figuring out what I wanted my life to look like.
As I sat there trying to think of what to say, Nicole, who I’d gotten to know much better that visit, turned to me and said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “Well, aren’t you going to write?”
She named what I most wanted to do but was shy about saying out loud, even to myself. Her words helped set into motion the trajectory that has guided my life ever since.
What is your own experience of seeing or being seen? And how might it have changed your own life?
If you have a minute, I’d be curious to hear about it, and see you, through your words, a little more clearly myself.
Warmly,
Thomas
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