Moment of Recognition

I have heard that self-esteem in chil­dren is relat­ed to their par­ents “see­ing” them. 

That is, a child needs a care-giv­er to see some­thing in him or her that the child does not or can­not yet see. When I said to my lit­tle daugh­ter many years ago, “what a beau­ti­ful pic­ture of a horse, you are such a great artist!” I was plant­i­ng a seed of pos­si­ble self-definition. 

Lat­er, as adults, we find our­selves look­ing for our own tal­ents, gifts, and direc­tions — no longer able or will­ing to let oth­ers define us. This, to me, is a nat­ur­al process of indi­vid­u­a­tion, of grow­ing up to be ourselves.

As an adult, the process often seems to be like sort­ing through the mil­lions of pat­terns of which we are made, pat­terns of think­ing, behav­ior, emo­tion, and motive. Occa­sion­al­ly, there is a glimpse of some­thing that stands out, that is real and true, that has gone unno­ticed and that is an affir­ma­tion. It is like sud­den­ly notic­ing a face in a pool of water from which the leaves had been brushed aside. Visions of the Nar­cis­sus myth notwith­stand­ing, the moment of recog­ni­tion is not about falling in love with one­self so much as sim­ply remem­ber­ing and appre­ci­at­ing the good with­in. Very help­ful for mak­ing essen­tial decisions.

A favorite state­ment by pho­tog­ra­ph­er, William Guion about one of his pho­tographs, Lean­ing Oak and Reflec­tion (avail­able here) illus­trates this point.

On a hazy, chilly Decem­ber morn­ing, I walked, cam­era and tri­pod bal­anced on my shoul­der, through a stand of oaks toward he edge of a pond. The water was sil­ver-gray and still like a mir­ror hung in an emp­ty, unlit hall. A thin mist fell, or more accu­rate­ly, hung in the air. Rain had soaked the land­scape dur­ing the night, and mud at the water’s edge sucked at my shoes. In the yawn­ing light, I saw an oak lean­ing at a pre­car­i­ous angle over the water. The soil had erod­ed over time, dis­solv­ing much of the tree’s foun­da­tion, yet the oak’s roots were locked tena­cious­ly into the reced­ing land. Against the threat of drown­ing, this tree sur­vived through an ele­gant dance of bal­ance, per­se­ver­ance, and hero­ism. Almost in praise, the pond mir­rored the oak’s pro­file cre­at­ing a beau­ti­ful man­dala-like wheel with spokes of water, leaves, earth and light.

As I set up and focused the tree on my cam­er­a’s ground glass, I thought how often in my own life I have lived just on the edge of hero­ic acts. How I’ve oper­at­ed with­in safe, com­fort­able bound­aries that defined the lim­its of what I could accom­plish. At this time in my life, I was con­sid­er­ing leav­ing a com­fort­able, secure job to fol­low my heart’s urg­ing to pho­to­graph and write. I stood on the edge of an uncer­tain future, mud suck­ing at my shoes, and stared out through the mists across sil­ver-gray water at this lean­ing oak. Through its exam­ple, I saw clear­ly through the mists of doubt sep­a­rat­ing me from a deci­sion. I stood for a long moment and imag­ined the worst that could hap­pen if I stretched too far over the edge of my fears. Then, in that sec­ond when I snapped the shut­ter record­ing this moem­nt on film, I stepped across an imag­i­nary line in my mind. In the pond’s dark mir­rored water I saw a face. It smiled back at me.

We see our­selves and know what we are to do. There may be no more vul­ner­a­ble moment of recog­ni­tion in a life­time. For from it we may build an unex­pect­ed­ly rich, affirm­ing, and endur­ing iden­ti­ty — or if we choose to hold back, deny it forever.

No one can tell you what to do. But cir­cum­stance itself may con­spire to yield the moment of choos­ing in just the way you have been look­ing for it. If only you notice the reflec­tion and respect the mystery.

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