Skip to main content

Seeing Often

For a whole week recently, I met a lot of people - much more than I usually do. It was work and vacation combined in the form of a road-trip that allowed us to stop at places we haven't been in a while. Around day four, I noticed I was getting exhausted from meeting yet another person (who I was still excited to see after a long time) because it meant I would need to sit across from them, see them and have them see me for a period of time. I wasn't sure why I would find that draining all at once. 

Maybe it was the passage of time and having to confront who we had each become - the fear of being disappointed combined with that of disappointing might have played a part. In the end, none of that happened - it was just nice to meet people after a long time, the initial shock of seeing and hearing about the changes since the last meeting disappeared quickly and the conversations felt just as easy as before - however far back in time that before might be. Reading this essay about how we were never meant to see ourselves this much made me think about my own recent experience with being seen too often in one-on-one settings.

We still don’t know what the full impact of seeing ourselves so often will be, and what the end result will be of this seismic shift in culture that began with the advent of the mirror. While cameras and mirrors might be neutral objects, it’s becoming clear that the rate at which these technologies have become available to us is quicker than we’ve had the time to mentally adjust to. One solution to the growing self-esteem crisis might be to de-prioritise the importance placed on appearances and put the focus back on community-building, resisting the immense pressure to conform to impossible beauty standards. It’s a nice idea – and one we should always be working towards – but it will also take a seemingly insurmountable amount of collective power.

In my case it was far from "impossible beauty standards" - the discomfort was more from the visual manifestations of live events, specially those that were unpleasant. Did the person who had known me from a very different time, see those signs and if so would it change anything.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...