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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.

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