30 April 2013

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Seen, Heard, and Understood

I found myself on vacation recently. My partner and I went to France. It was equal parts charming and idyllic. It was also curiously stressful.

You see, in Toronto – at the best of times – when I go out I will inevitably have a selection of personalities to encounter: the barista making my americano, the TTC operator at the front of the streetcar, the person operating the cash register at the local grocery store. Ideally, in this sequence of events, even if I’m not consciously aware of it, I’ll be seen, heard, and understood.

These are three very important things to experience in day-to-day life: it feels good to be recognized, to be listened to, and to feel that the person on the other side of our dealings-with acknowledges our existence. Sadly, this doesn’t always come to be. The barista may get my order wrong, the TTC operator might be a bit gruff, the person operating the cash might talk to me without making any sort of eye contact. All of this may come true over the course of single day and I may be left scratching my head as to why (or more likely, why me?). Accumulatively, it can have an alienating effect for people.

Now…take those naturally occurring human variables and transpose them onto a country I’ve never visited before, whose language I only have a rudimentary understanding of, and you can see how France proved to be a little bit of work as well as vacation. A day didn’t go by where there wasn’t some sort of struggle – big or small (mostly small) – to make sense of myself with someone else and not to take any incidental lack of being seen, heard, or understood to heart.

Overall, the work had a strengthening effect – I know that next time I’ll be better prepared for the challenge. But, as I mentioned, not without a little stress first. The experience also had the effect of reminding me what people with acute social anxieties must endure every day.