#tobeknown

[fromdustandrust]

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke,

Vincent Van Gogh

[thephilosophyofsuns]

The desire to be known is so strange

Whenever someone tells me I remind them of someone else, I'm desperate to know why. What about them do you see in me?

I wish to know who I am. I've found that my understanding of myself is based mostly on reflective feedback.

I also gauge my friendships on how well we know each other. It doesn't matter how long we've known each other or how much we've done together, I want a friend who will know me. I want a friend who will tell me things they noticed about me without me having to tell them. This is true the other way around, too: I want to know them. If I know nothing about them, we are not friends.

I had this wonderful experience with one of my friends who casually brought up that I hum when I read. Most of the time, I don't even know that I'm doing it. But it was a reminder that she was thinking of me. I want friends who will think about me when I'm not with them, because I think of them when they're gone.

On the other hand, I hate when people tell me something about myself that's not true. It's as if my very soul is recoiling from the untruth.

Often, it's a summary; that person never bothered to look deeper, to pay attention to who I really am, and so they will make a general statement of me. I am not a being who can be summarized.

I want to be around people who care enough to get to know me, but won't be scared off once they do. I want people who will let me get to know them too.

I want people who have spent so much time with me that they notice little quirks that I'm unaware of. I want to find every endearing quirk of their personality.

I want people who, when they give me gifts, know me so well that they give me something I didn't know I wanted or needed. I want to be able to look at something and think "they will love this."

I want people who use our quality time to understand each other.

I want people who can tell when I need a hug and when I need not to be touched. I want to know them well enough to see when they need comfort or when they need space.

I just want to know and be known.

Aka: Northern Attitude by Noah Kahan

[lunapatroclus]

Beneath the Willow

In my mind, they lay beneath the willow tree-

their limbs slack with sleep.

And about them drifts those fickle leaves,

that soon the earth shall reap.

Yet first a shroud of gold and green,

a violent crown of hues to please

with all of autumns ardent splendour.

That cascade of exaltations,

equal only to my own- wrenching,

half-muttered praises.

And yet still,

they do not hear.

[edensjasmine]

“I don’t need you to respect me, I respect me. I don’t need you to love me, I love me. But I want you to know you could know me, if you change your mind” #stevenuniverse #selfrespect #selflove #tobeknown #tobeloved #tobecontinued https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs-_K8bl3KX/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=plcjflhbzf0r

[generousgavel-blog]

J. D. Salinger and the Reader/Writer Connection

 J. D. Salinger wrote Catcher in the Rye as, more or less, a middle finger salute to the elite of his day. You could say he “saluted” society at large, and perhaps that is what he intended, but the youth of 1950s America were… how do I say this?

Anything but offended.

Shane Salerno’s 2013 documentary, Salinger, makes it explicitly clear just how the youth of his day responded.

With adoration.

It was a love affair. A rapid-spreading fire that completely overwhelmed the author.

 Infamously, he hid himself away, ignoring thousands of love-letters from smitten fans and hundreds of their frantic pleas for validation, approval, and even relationship advice.

He’d written a real winner. And he hated it.

My guess is he didn’t really love his readers. I don’t even think he particularly loved Holden. I mean, maybe he did, when he thought he’d created a ravaging new character who defied all expectations and proved him, the author, an incredibly unique individual, with the ability to see all the woes of society while, himself, being quite outside of it.

But he missed something. He was, despite himself, a perfect representation of post WWII America. And he was a voice for the masses, not the anomaly he wanted to be.

But, apparently, the adoration he received practically killed him. And he quickly retired to the woods, staunchly refusing to share the rest of his work until after his death.

What almost any writer would have died for, suffocated Salinger.

 And the reason is caught up in the universal fact that, perhaps more deeply than anything, we all want to be known.

Not just seen. Not just listened to. Known. Understood at a heart level.

In their now iconic "Iris" lyrics, the Goo Goo Dolls sing, “I don’t want the world to see me. ‘Cus I don’t think that they’d understand.”

We love that, right? We get it. Some of us just hide away for fear of being misunderstood. I’d say many people do, at least to some degree. And we all hide our most fragile thoughts, the ones we know but can’t explain. The ones we can’t even put into words.

 So a book-- wow. A book that does that for us, that articulates the every nuance and facet of our own inner lives… dynamite.

You can start a fire with that.

And that’s what Salinger did.

So why not revel in his surprising popularity? Why not appreciate the fire he’d started and add to it?

My guess is he wanted to be known so badly that his popularity made him feel common. If everyone was suddenly observing the errors in posh society, if everyone was now sticking it to the man, who was he?

Because we also want to be unique.

Salinger wanted to be known for being Jerome David, keen observer, wounded soldier, rare human being. Maybe even oddball. Anything but ordinary. It wasn’t even love he was looking for. Just understanding.

Fame itself does not satisfy. It did not satisfy him and I kind of love him for his melodramatic response, showing the world a truth we rarely witness.

Connection satisfies. We want to share our thoughts and have the reader return to us and say, “you are incredible. You thought of that?”

And when we read, we are really asking for our souls to be put into words. Our uncommon, oddball, reclusive, and rare souls.

Sometimes the masses can be touched with one book, like Catcher in the Rye, but most often it is one person at a time.

So, who do you read? Who gets you?

 EXTRA CREDIT: have you ever met a favorite author? Were they how you imagined them? Tell me that story. 

[chacal-la-chaise]

June 1–3: #rockyourhandwritingjune2018 #threewords #writingtools #tobeknown #Pelikan #rotringartpen #jherbin1670rougehematite #yoobigelpens #june2018 (at Foxes Arroyo - Upper Chaparral)

[drbennasherman]

The desire to be known

One of the most fundamental and universal desires is to be known, truly known, by the people we care about. This is most true in emotionally intimate relationships.

We want to feel that someone knows and understands us, deeply, thoroughly. We want to be loved by someone who knows us this deeply. There is no greater emotional security than feeling accepted and loved for everything we are— the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Most human beings are wired this way. We are biologically developed to seek connection with other beings, to feel safe and accepted within a relationship.

This powerful craving to be known and loved also helps to explain why it is so deeply hurtful when someone you thinks knows you then believes something untrue and uncharacteristic about you.

Lori, Ellen, Yuko, and Mikayla had been friends for years. They’d met in a Newcomers group and over the years had sympathized over job losses, bad break-ups, and tragic haircuts. They’d celebrated new degrees, new jobs, new partners, and new babies.  Sometimes they saw each other weekly, sometimes monthly, sometimes less frequently if life got in the way.

It had been one of those longer periods without contact and Lori was eager for a night out with her closest women friends. She texted Ellen and got no response, which was weird but not unprecedented. She emailed Yuko and also got no response. She was starting to get uncomfortable, but had no idea what might be the problem, if there was one. After waiting a few more days, she phoned Mikayla.

Mikayla only answered because she was distracted by the dog barking at a squirrel and didn’t stop to look at the caller ID. When she did answer and found herself talking to Lori, she was immediately and obviously uncomfortable.

“Mikayla, is something going on that I should know about? I haven’t seen any of you for ages and now it’s as if you’re all avoiding me.”

Mikayla’s voice was pretty cold and her words clipped. “Yes, Lori, we’re pretty disappointed.”

Lori was at a complete loss. “Disappointed about what? What are you talking about?”

“Look, Lori, we know that you’ve been seeing Sherry’s husband, Jack.”

Lori felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. When she could finally speak, she said, “Where in the world did you get that idea?” She was still too shocked to say more.

“Sherry said that she’s known for months that Jack was running around. She found a text from you on Jack’s phone, a text arranging to get together.” Mikayla’s voice was cold and harsh.

Lori had to stop and think about both the fact that Jack was being unfaithful to Sherry and that SHE was being accused of being unfaithful to her own husband. The worst part wasn’t that it wasn’t true. The worst part was that her best friends thought she was capable of such a thing. The hurt in her voice was clear when she answered Mikayla.

“You all think I would be unfaithful to my husband, and with a neighbor’s husband?”

Mikayla’s cold certainty started to waver, but she asked, “Well, aren’t you?”

Lori could barely speak through the tears. “Jack is my accountant. The text was to arrange our annual meeting to go over my taxes. How could you all think it was something illicit? You acted like you haven’t known me for all these years. You rushed to believe this as if I were a stranger instead of someone whose every experience and opinion you’ve known for years. And to not even to give me the chance to explain the text? How could you? I thought you knew me.”

Lori hung up and cried for hours. She’d opened her heart and mind without reservation to these friends. She thought that they knew her deeply and thoroughly.

Then the most horrific thought of all— could her husband have heard these same ugly rumors? Worse, could he have believed them?

The minute he came in from playing with the kids in the yard, she took him into the kitchen and asked him. He gave her the most loving and reassuring answer she could have hoped for.

“Yes, I heard the rumors. But I know you, Lori. I didn’t believe them for a moment or give them a second thought.”

She hugged him with all the love in her heart, and with infinite gratitude. She felt truly known and loved.

The friendships were all salvageable and the wound healed. Her friends’ heartfelt apologies and clear distress at having hurt her allowed Lori eventually to trust them again; but the pain had been profound.

[nicozo]

"To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us." Timothy Keller