Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
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Animated, huge eyes deep with sensitivity staring straight at you. into you. Empathy, warmth, sadness also. Expressive eyes. The feeling she could break into a genuine smile and also burst into tears at any moment.
The thing about her going quiet and pensive and choosing to tell us about her childhood and how she still feels guilty over the incident - she didn't have to keep that in. She could have edited it out. Edited it to make it look like she didn't care. Edit out the way her voice trembled - the long silences, looking down at nothing, avoiding the camera, choosing her words carefully as she spoke. But she kept that in. And people responded to it positively - speaking for myself, that moment of honesty alone - that occurred across oceans, miles away and temporally remote as well, recorded and edited and uploaded probably a good 14 months before I stumbled across it - this rendering of a stranger from somewhere in the globe who doesn't know I exist - What I'm trying to say is that it felt real. felt like being spoken to, being seen, understood, accepted, trusted. That moment supplied more human warmth and genuine connection than I had received in a week.1
Is it like in the movies? When the actor portrays an emotion so real and authentic that the audience feels it too? Maybe portray is the wrong word. Feels. Embodies. Exhibits. Makes you feel it so visceral and immediate as if it's actually happening to you.
Requires being open and vulnerable. Recognizing that both the good and the bad have value. And understanding that displaying virtue can be construed as boastful, and public sorrow can be considered performative, insincere, obnoxious, false, fetishised, and yet daring, being willing to navigate that middle ground, to walk that tightrope of broadcasting your feelings in a raw and visceral and unpolished way. Attempting to be really truly vulnerable instead of trying to seem it. Attempting to offer something real, to try and connect. To risk the sneer and ridicule and parody and condescension. Requires an odd mixture of honesty and exhibition, of interiority and presentation. Like writing publicly about your struggles or difficult moments I suppose. Like any kind of writing - any kind of art. For it to work on any level and connect and affect a stranger you have to be incredibly authentic and also preternaturally self aware. Skillful in managing how the other perceives you. Skillful in perceiving yourself accurately and acutely. Skillful in interrogating yourself for falseness and truth. Requires you to possess all of the innocence and none of the naivete
1 sad, but true ↩
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