In the movie Avatar (2009) there is a phrase spoken that is deeply meaningful to me. When “Jake” says to “Neytiri”, “I see you,” he means I see the love in your heart and the feelings in your soul. It means he is truly listening and that she means everything to him. As he speaks those words to her a single tear cascades down her cheek. She replies back to Jake, “I see you.” I was struck by the phrase and the context in which it occurred. I have remembered and used it often all the years since I first heard it. I try to hold myself to the standard of truly seeing and hearing others.
For me when I say to someone “I see you or I hear you” it means “I really see you, I really hear you at a deep level.” When I say “I hear you” it means that I am truly listening, I truly care, I see beneath the façade of pretending to hear you or see you and I am connecting with you as deeply as I can. When my great friend Jeff Trollinger and I had our last conversation in this world, I heard the difficulty of his speaking and his pain, and I listened closely. When Jeff died unexpectedly two days later I grieved deeply, but I was glad I truly heard and saw him.
Too often we don’t really see or listen to each other. Too often we hear the words that another is speaking to us but we aren’t really listening and our hearing is superficial. Even when we can quote someone back word for word it doesn’t mean we necessarily heard them.
I remember a friend from years ago who would listen to me expressing my deepest feelings of hurt or loss or fear and he would immediately begin giving me an intellectual “lesson” or “observation” that in effect denied my sense of being truly heard. He didn’t see me or hear me at all. I didn’t want a lecture or intellectual response, I wanted to know he heard me. We’re all guilty of sometimes listening but not really listening or seeing but not really seeing. I feel terrible when I do that to someone else.
When I am doing my best listening I am hearing you at the deepest level; I am seeing you at the deepest level. Words are important, no question about it but beneath our words are feelings and if we only heard the words another person speaks without connecting with their feelings we haven’t really heard them. When someone shares their deepest feelings, their deepest hurts, or their deepest feelings with us our goal becomes to hear them, to see them, and to acknowledge them. We hear, we listen, we see, we care.
“I see you” has become a shorthand expression for me that means “I am listening deeply to you and I acknowledge your feelings in the most genuine way.” To say “I see you” or “I hear you” means we see and hear beneath the surface down to the core of the person we are talking with. It means we are connecting on a deeply emotional and spiritual level. We can only connect deeply when we truly begin to see and hear each other. Let others know that you see them. Let them know you hear them. Give others the deeply profound power of “I see you”!
D Robert Chance