{"id":1453,"date":"2013-03-10T15:40:56","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T21:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=1453"},"modified":"2013-03-10T16:10:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-10T22:10:21","slug":"i-see-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=1453","title":{"rendered":"I see you"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Zulu greeting, \u201cSawubona\u201d means \u201cI see you<\/strong>\u201d and the response \u201cNgikhona\u201d means \u201cI am here\u201d.<\/p>\n

Inherent in the Zulu greeting and in the response, is the sense that until you saw me, I didn\u2019t exist. By recognizing me, you brought me into existence.<\/p>\n

I watched a TED talk today of Amanda Palmer<\/a>. She was a street performer who used to dress up as a bride statue. Whenever someone would give some money she would look them very intently and intensely in the eyes and offer them a flower. Amanda spoke about people who seemed deeply lonely. In her words, “And my eyes would say, ‘Thank you. I see you<\/strong>.’ And their eyes would say, ‘Nobody ever sees me<\/strong>. Thank you.'”<\/p>\n

I think about an interaction Brene Brown had with a drive-thru cashier<\/a>. In Brene’s words, <\/p>\n

“I drove through the Chick-fil-A drive-through to get a Diet Dr. Pepper. Right as I pulled up to the window, my cell phone rang. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought it might be Charlie’s school calling, so I answered it. It wasn’t the school \u2014 it was someone calling to confirm my hair appointment. I got off the phone as quickly as I could.<\/p>\n

In the short time it took me to say, \u201cYes, I’ll be at my appointment,\u201d the woman in the window and I had finished our soda-for-money transaction. I apologized to her the second I got off of the phone. I said, \u201cI’m so sorry. The phone rang right when I was pulling up and I thought it was my son’s school.\u201d<\/p>\n

I must have surprised her because she got huge tears in her eyes and said, \u201cThank you. Thank you so much. You have no idea how humiliating it is sometimes. They don’t even see us.<\/strong>\u201d ”<\/p>\n

As a North American society, we are losing the ability to “see<\/strong>” each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Zulu greeting, \u201cSawubona\u201d means \u201cI see you\u201d and the response \u201cNgikhona\u201d means \u201cI am here\u201d. Inherent in the Zulu greeting and in the response, […] Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":69,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1522,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/1522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}