Look Again…

Years ago in seminary, one of my teachers said something I’ve never forgotten.

Many of us are loved, but not really seen. Others are seen, but not loved. What most of us long for is to be fully seen and fully loved for what’s seen.

I’ve carried those words for twenty years. The older I get, the less I think they’re only about relationships.

I think they’re about freedom.

Because there’s a particular kind of freedom that comes from no longer needing to hide.

When we trust that we can bring our whole selves into a relationship, without editing, performing, or pretending, something in us finally relaxes.

We stop spending so much energy protecting an image.

We can simply be.

To let someone see all of us. The parts we’re proud of. The parts we’re still growing into. The places we’re confident. The places we’re scared. The habits we’ve outgrown, and the ones we haven’t.

And then…have them stay.

That’s what love has slowly become for me.

Chelle has seen me at my best, and she’s seen me when old fears got the better of me. The overthinking. The defensiveness that shows up when I feel cornered. The way I care so much it quietly becomes worry before I even notice it happening. I’ve seen all of that in her too.

Like most couples, we spent some of our early years trying, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to shape each other into the people we thought we needed. Every relationship carries those hopes. Maybe even those disappointments.

We still catch ourselves doing it sometimes.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted.

We became less interested in changing each other and more interested in understanding each other.

Less interested in being right.

More interested in being close. More interested in intimacy.

I used to think that was simply what a good marriage looked like. Now I think it’s one of love’s quiet miracles.

We’ve been watching The Handmaid’s Tale. I know…I’m late.

What’s stayed with me isn’t the brutality.

It’s how the brutality begins.

Long before anyone is harmed, they stop being seen.

They get sorted into a role, a label, a purpose someone else assigned them. There’s a word the show uses for women who don’t fit the categories it allows.

Unwomen.

I remember exactly where I was when that word landed. Sitting on the couch next to Chelle, I felt a wave of recognition…grief, maybe. Not because it was fiction. Because it wasn’t…not really.

Chelle and I have spent much of our life together doing a kind of quiet math most people never have to learn…

Should we hold hands in an unfamiliar neighborhood or country?

Whether it’s easier to let someone assume we’re sisters or friends.

Whether correcting them feels safe…or simply exhausting.

The truth is, we do that math far less than we used to. The world has changed in many ways, and so have we. Over the years we’ve found a steadiness that isn’t so dependent on the conditions around us. We’ve learned to carry a sense of safety within ourselves, and with each other.

But in unfamiliar places, the calculation can still quietly arise.

Not because we live in fear.

Because experience has taught us to pay attention.

That’s what struck me about that word, unwomen.

It doesn’t simply describe a person.

It replaces one.

Once I’ve decided who you are, I no longer have to meet you. I only have to relate to the story I’ve already written about you.

You can’t really be seen once someone believes they already know who you are.

I don’t think Gilead is ultimately about the future, or even about religion. I think it’s what happens whenever certainty becomes more important than curiosity. Whenever someone decides it’s their job to make another person fit an idea instead of meeting the person standing in front of them.

That temptation doesn’t require a totalitarian government.

It shows up in families.

In churches.

In sanghas, if we’re honest.

Anywhere we’d rather correct another person than become curious about them.

Because love doesn’t begin with fixing someone.

It begins with seeing them.

Not the idea of them.

The actual person.

Maybe that’s why practice matters so much to me.

Every time I sit down to meditate, I’m reminded how quickly the mind turns living people into ideas. Including myself. It decides what’s happening before I’ve really looked. It confuses the story with reality.

Practice asks something beautifully simple.

Look again.

Get curious.

Meet this moment before your opinions about it.

Maybe that’s what love asks of us too.

Not agreement.

Not sameness.

Not that someone become the person we imagined they should be.

Just the willingness to keep looking, even as the person in front of us keeps changing.

Chelle has never asked me to become someone else in order to be loved.

She has invited me to become more fully myself.

I hope I’ve done the same for her.

Most nights we’re just two people on a couch, curled up together, completely at ease. There’s nothing to prove. Nothing to hide. Loving each other has become less something we do and more a place we come home to.

Maybe that’s what love has been teaching me all along.

Not to admire another person.

Not to agree about everything.

Not to make them into someone who feels more comfortable to me.

Just to keep seeing.

Again and again.

Because every human being is larger than the story we tell about them.

Maybe that’s where love lives.

And maybe that’s where freedom begins.