Walking the Wall

Dawn made a comment on my last entry that has stuck in my mind, she
wrote, “Sometimes just a smile or nod of acknowledgement from one human
being
to another is enough. Sometimes all we want is to be seen.” This tied
in with something I read today in a book called The Safe-Keeper’s Secret.
In this book’s world, a safe-keeper is a person that people can tell
their secrets to–who will not, and in fact, cannot, reveal their
secrets. It is a type of secular confessional, of sorts. The daughter
of a safe-keeper has difficulty understanding how her mother can hear
some of these secrets she is given keeping of, and not “do” something
about them. She doesn’t, she tells her mother, understand what her
mother’s part in the world is. Her mother explains, “I am the voice
that says ‘I know’ when someone tells me ‘This is too hard for me to
hold on to by myself.’ I am the soul who reminds other souls that they
are not alone. I cannot bring them solutions, I cannot make their
troubles disappear, I can only say that I hear them and I understand.
Sometimes that’s enough” (p. 61)

I think that very often both of these ideas are true, what people are
looking for is to be seen, to be heard, to be acknowledged–but often
times in our society neither of these things happen. I remember years
ago when I was working in the toy section of a department store around
Christmas, the motto was, “Don’t make eye contact, if you do, they’ll
want something”–it seems a motto for more than just toy departments.
There are a lot of things that I cannot change in other people’s lives,
I can’t fix things, I can’t wave a magic wand and make life better–but
I can see them, and I can acknowledge not just their existence, but the
divinity that each person has inherently, even if they have strayed
very far from that beginning.