Thought for Today

Thought for Today... (written seven years ago)?

I wonder what it would be like if we spent a day, just a day, seeing ourselves through the eyes (double-consciousness, W.E.B. Du Bois; George Yancy) of the other??

I wonder what it is like for some people who first start to form a sense of self through the eyes of others, for example, the growing child, who looks into the eyes of its parents, or the child that grows up in an environment that is full of hatred, anger and/or violence...others who do not value, respect or appreciate them as unique, worthwhile human beings...who in turn attaches what s/he sees, hears and feels as something caused by themself...

"It is only by being "recognised" by another, by many others, or in the extreme by all others, that a human being is really human, for himself as well as for others" (A, Kojève).?

In No EXIT, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE...?

"I will take it all, tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrottes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to suffer indeed. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of sorrow which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough. I suppose it never hurts enough because one does not know how to get out of the situation; it is constant and never-ending, as it is fixed and perpetuated" (or so it seems, no matter where one looks, one sees itself through the eyes of the other, even when alone)?

We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not dammed for nothing".?

No people are not dammed for nothing, and yet people are labelled in all different ways and unfortunately sometimes blindly we wear it like a coat or a skin...these can be learnt behaviours, conditionings, what’s more...a role one plays "as though expected or condemned to play this role" blindly and to disastrous ends...

He continues...

"If we must mention this state -of- affairs, I suggest that we call ourselves “absent”, that is more proper".?

So, to be absent could be deemed an unchangeable situation, lost forever, in a world of non-being...but is it proper? is it immutable? are we responsible for the ill-treatment by the hands of others...I think not...!

Completing this excerpt in the play…

"So that is what the hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! The farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people."

There is irony in this as.... we can continue to see others as responsible for our lives and what happens in them...we can choose to believe that we cannot make changes in our own lives...but I wonder whether we can do it alone?

If it was people, other human beings that began to set the cast for how one view themself and the world they inhabit, internal and external...could not people, through their agency, reverse this process? And in doing so, really see your beauty, and authentic you that has been there all along, waiting to burst into life...and see those areas that need improving...

Strive to be more loving, help one extra person, think a little less of self and power...and maybe we'd see something of ourselves through the eyes of the other that is more acceptable and less harmful.

To do so, try seeing yourself through the eyes of the other for a day!?