See What I See

This is a picture taken by RACHEL of a bush covered with ice that caught her fancy. In her posting on the topic she tells of first appreciating the beauty of this ice-covered bush, then going back into the church to tell her friends they should come see it.

To this I responded:

"Very cool image. We have frozen fog here this morning so EVERYTHING looks really magical...(except the roads which are downright scary dangerous.)

What intrigued me most about your posting though is the example you give of feeling compelled to tell other people about what you saw.

Since I teach Sociology I'm always looking at ways we interact...I once did a small study on this topic on the day that the Challenger exploded. I sat in a college library where there was a TV monitor set up showing newscasts of the tragedy. I had a grid to record the responses of the people who came in and saw this. The initial reactions were all over the map. Some laughed, some cried, some swore, some remained silent. But nearly EVERY person went and found someone to tell within 8-14 seconds.

Heavenly Father created us to be social critters... no matter how amazing or horrible our experiences may be, it is only in telling /showing those things to others that we can fully make meaning of them in our lives.

I think we all hunger to connect with others, to have them see what we see."

I've been thinking about that concept a bit more...

In the Psychopathology course I just finished up at WWC we talked about the difference between mentally ill people who seek treatment for specific disorders and relatively "normal" folks (whatever that means) who go to therapy because they are unhappy or in some sort of emotional pain. We talked about the role of validation in mental health treatment...helping people feel fully heard and known and how that in and of itself can provide a considerable relief from personal suffering.

When I did Spectrum training in Boise we talked about the concept of Intimacy being best understood by the phrase "In To Me You See". We both long for and fear that sort of connection...to be understood, to be heard, to be seen for who we really are behind the social bravado.

Last night I was flipping TV channels while working on a jigsaw puzzle...I caught the very last few minutes of CSI. Don't know what the story had been about, but one of the CSI techs was asking Gil Grissom what he found attractive/exciting in a person. Grissom answered "Someone who doesn't judge me"....which was the closing line of the show.

Isn't that what we all want? Someone who will listen to us, see us, know us fully and not judge?