It’s the first gesture he usually makes when he meets me and it means something like “Grandpa, pick me up, hold me a little, talk to me!”
I am not allowed to put him down again and let him go and join the others until I have done so. If for some reason I don’t do it or I don’t do it enough, he keeps insisting and sometimes even starts crying. Only after holding him and kissing him for a sufficient time, which is always a matter of waiting, can I let him go with confidence. Although he still sometimes comes back to me and raises his hands and I have to raise them again, shorter and shorter. This must also be done when he goes out, but it is faster because then his parents join.
In the months that this pattern has been going on between me and him, I have often wondered what drives him and I have come to the conclusion that the answer is an elemental and captivating simplicity, even or especially when he comes with his 3 brothers and sisters: ” Grandpa, look at me!”
How basic it is is well illustrated by what the famous British critic and playwright George Bernhard Shaw (1856-1950) wrote about it, according to many the “greatest after Shakespeare” and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925 ). : “The worst sin against our fellow men is not to hate them but to indifference. This is the essence of inhumanity. Indifference is saying: you don’t count, you don’t exist for me.”
In other words, there is nothing more painful than not being seen. Nor is there anything for which we are willing to go so far as to persuade, often almost force, others to see us. This is what I learn from my nephew. That there is nothing so important, so satisfying, so reassuring as the feeling of being seen and understood. But the disturbing question arises: how many children are not seen, not understood?
Or to put it another way, how many children grow up without tenderness. Because tenderness is nothing more than emotional involvement and emotional care for the other. You don’t need to know psychological wisdom to be emotionally involved. You just have to be there, be present, paying more attention to what the other person is experiencing in that moment.
Shaw: “There’s something about being seen that promotes growth.” In other words, if you shine the spotlight of your attention on me, I will grow. When you see me, it increases the likelihood that I will see myself too. But if you don’t see me, I often don’t see myself either. And that can really be painful.
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2024-01-07 20:51:36
#pain #column