Transparent

Last year I was in creative writing, and the best thing we would ever do is sit in a circle and review each other’s work. I remember the first time my work was shared so clearly. My heart pounded as the papers were passed around the room and I secretly watched everyone’s face as they read. Would they hate it? That was the question that went through my mind, not will they love it? I watched in fear as they wrote something in the margins, would it be good commentary or bad? There were specific people I watched carefully, people I respected for being Creators, for making something I could appreciate.

When everyone was finished and put down the pages we started in a circle saying the good things we like about it. I was so afraid it would be like the other sessions that I had participated in, ones where people would say, ‘I really liked your dialogue’ in a really flat, emotionless voice, and the next person would say, ‘I agree with her.’ And no one would think of an original compliment and no one cared to.

It wasn’t like that at all. They said they loved it, they said they liked the way I skipped around the years, they said they liked the present tense and that I wrote like I was a third grader or seventh grader and this and that and so on.

But then came the opinion that mattered to me, this boy that I had known for a year. I had seen him Create things that I couldn’t. I respected him for what he did, what I saw, and I wanted him to respect me.

I won’t tell you what he said, because it doesn’t matter.

I respected him because of what I saw, and later in the year when I was able to work with him, I saw who he was. I heard what words came out of his mouth, and I watched his work ethic. It’s not that he was a bad kid or anything; it’s just that I shouldn’t have given him blind respect. I shouldn’t have said to myself, ‘I need to take his opinion into greater account than the others because I’ve seen what he can do.’

Really, it doesn’t matter what we can see people do. What is more impressive is what we don’t see. The way someone smiles at their friend when they’re having a bad day, it’s the bond that’s forged between best friends, it’s the atmosphere the parents create in their home. Those are the more impressive acts, because they can’t deceive. When someone writes a page or makes a video or acts on stage, they are hiding themselves behind their work, acts you can’t see are transparent and allow you to see the real person.

Make an effort to recognize when someone moves aside to make room for the outcast in the conversation, or when a joke is said just to get that one person to smile,  or a bully insults someone just see them wince,  because it happens all the time, these acts that we can’t see. And we do them, unconsciously, without being aware that we’re showing people who we really are.