Degrees of Sight... - '14

A dear friend of mine is a lover of words and symbolism and meanings as well and when he finds these words, or remembers them, he sometimes gives them to me. One word of many that he has given to me is the one that encapsulates an ideal, a way of living, of existing in perspective…a way of remembering our place in life.

Ubuntu.

The concept of this word is…”I am because you are. You are because I am.” Think of it like the symbiosis of trees needing our carbon dioxide while we need their oxygen.

I am because you are.

That’s a scary thought, for we autonomous folk with our individualist living make it happen mindset. It’s vulnerability. This also ties in to a Zulu greeting and its enjoinder that I was taught.

Sawubona: “I see you”

And the response is, Ngikhona: “I am here.”

But not just here as in the place, or “hello, I’ve arrived”, but…you see me…therefore I exist. The idea that I did not exist before you spoke your reality to me, that I am here and you recognize me as worthy of existing too. The concept of "I need you to know I’m alive; I need you to see me in order to fully exist." Affirmation from another validates our self.

These three distinct words have resonated with me for years now. A clear, resounding echo from my soul, of truth and acceptance. I remember a dark time in my college years, speaking out loud and no one seeming to hear me…I felt less than nothing; a ghost at a table full of people. I was sitting beside a then-dear friend, now mere acquaintance, and I turned and asked her with all the pieces of my heart in my eyes: 

“Can you see me?”  

 My soul crying out…do you see me? Am I here? Do I exist to you? Am I worthy of existing?

And she looked directly at me and said “I see you."

Her soul had said "Sawubona"...And I believed her in that moment…I lived.

But here lately, I’ve been pondering the desire in my own heart to be seen, and noticed, to exist on multiple planes. Not just as a woman, but as a thinker, as a seeker of adventure, as a wanderer and as a passionate feeler and giver. I’ve been in a low, hopeless place, emotionally, for a very long time, and have taken steps to achieve closure with my issues, but there is still this shadow that darkens my heart’s doorstep that I can’t seem to shake.

The inner believings of: “You’re not enough. You’ll never glitter or be bright enough to make someone see you. You’re not enough and it’s all just a glamor. You’re a fake around them… they will forget you.”

And for some people, it’s true. They have forgotten or chosen to ignore, and I have had to walk away from many more. People hurt and I hurt, and things eventually die. And I have grown to understand that our lives are all cycles of growth, death, decay and rejuvenation. As an essay I read the other day said:

(in regards to trees): “If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home […], for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, […].”   Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

“Every step is birth, every step is death…”

We can never walk the same path again. Kids run and walk backwards in play or in gym class but they can never return along the path they have walked. We always curve, we list, we change directions and like walking across the desert, our path shifts, our trail is gone, we are perpetually leaving a breadcrumb trail of memories that in time, we forget and they are lost to the bellies of the crows of history and death. 

But there is also this constant life, this Living, that I am walking towards. It consists of finding those souls who are in bodies I can see, who, when they stretch out their arms to envelop me in a hug, I can see nothing but the rising and setting sun in their breastbone and the mountainous horizon silhouetted between their open palms, across their chest, beckoning me to come and run and search, and know and not know, and be mystified and exult in the mystery of who they are…and they see me.

Ngikhona.

And my soul responds...I am here. I am real. Their touch on my skin, reminds me that my pulse is fired by the same electricity that sparks in their nerves, their thoughts, their fire echoes my own…my lodestones of belonging and understanding swing back to the center and I know that nothing can be understood, and life is pain, but knowing that these souls I have found aren’t afraid of my wounds, as deep as they go, they aren’t afraid of my defense or my anger or ugliness. They gently set down their shield and let me see their wounds, their scars, their hastily patched up stitch jobs and we compare sutures…we are survivors…we know pain and are not afraid. 

My desire to hide or disappear fades. The need to cover and bluster and be stone-cold and impervious dies as the desire to be warm and alive again blooms and courses along arteries too used to carrying the lead of defeat through to lungs that burn with inconsistency and despair, pushing that poisonous burden through my mind and heart…instead that heat, that dark fire that once sparked in my eyes and shone in my smile blooms inside my chest…and we lift our shields, our wounds still there but looked at with love and understanding…the understanding that we are safe in each other, that I’m not afraid of who you are and where you’ve been…and know that you see my crosshatched, scarred skin and the seeping soul wounds I can’t fully close…and I know that you will not strike. We rest in that sanctuary, warriors with no swords, shields only to protect. And we Live.

I am because you are. You are because I am.

Ubuntu