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| Courtesy LocalStew 1/22/2015 |
How many times, I wonder now, had Gary sensed the unasked question in Suzanne’s face: “How do I look?”
How many times did she hear the response in his unspeaking eyes: “You look beautiful.”
The Pope spoke on January 9th about “mirror men and women”
who close themselves off from others, building a superficial and fragile sense
of self from their image reflected in a mirror.
And research last year spoke of the compulsion to post “Selfies”, our
image taken literally from arm’s length.
Francis said that focusing in on ourselves hardens our hearts. Selfie research considered the need to
establish one’s existence by posting evidence of it, kind of a “Posto, ergo sum”
corollary of the Cartesian “Cogito ergo sum” premise.
Maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe we just look in the mirror or take a
selfie to answer an ordinary question: “How do I look?”
Since reading about the Pope’s Mirror People reference, I’ve
reflected on my friends on the street, the ones who live there, without mirrors or selfies to see how they look. And I shudder to consider that they rely upon
our gazes for their sense of self-worth.
There is a car commercial that shows a pretty plain-looking
guy walking unknowingly in front of a good-looking car. Women look admiringly at the car, but he thinks they are looking
alluringly at him.
Pretty soon his posture and bearing change;
he’s feeling pretty darned good about himself.
Cut to a guy in layers of clothes, unshaven and carrying his
most essential belongings in a plastic bag. How many looks of disdain or
averted eyes does it take before he feels pretty darned bad about himself? Aversion and disdain are, spiritually speaking,
looks that kill.
Yesterday I saw the photo on top that showed me that the opposite is
true too. Looks of love can give life.
Gary Lichtman is a real mensch. Wikipedia describes that word adeptly as “a
person with the qualities one would hope for in a friend or trusted colleague”.
For years Gary was a colleague and friend at University of Detroit Mercy. A few years ago we learned that his wife
Suzanne had been diagnosed with cancer, and that the prognosis was not
positive. Yesterday was saw on his
Facebook page that Suzanne had passed away.
The photo! Look at their bright
young faces in the lower half of the photo!
I see promise and hope and possibility and potential. But it is the one on the top half that blows
me away, because I see Suzanne’s beauty and the love in Gary’s eyes.
Suzanne and Gary and their daughter had visited us last
year, five years since our retirement had put us across the state from them. Gary was his usual smiling self, all attention
and encouragement and affirmation and gratitude. So was Suzanne. I reflected on her freedom to be her best
self despite the hair loss and swelling that come with the cancer fight. After only moments of thinking of their fight
with cancer, I was fully drawn into their dance with life, their enjoyment of
the moments with us surrounded by the beauty of nature.
How many times, I wonder now, had Gary sensed the unasked
question in Suzanne’s face: “How do I look?”
How many times did she hear the response in his unspeaking
eyes: “You look beautiful.”
I was just sitting with my writer friend Steve, who is “winter
camping” in his van these months. As we
shared an order of toast and a couple of cups of coffee, I shared with him that
I was writing this note about Suzanne, and her feeling beautiful because that’s
the way she was seen. And I shared too
my fear that those on the street may learn to feel ugly. He looked at me gently, and said, “For us, it’s
all about finding relationships that help us see our value.”
Gary will, I hope, continue the work he does at the
university, helping people see our best face, the beautiful things and people
at our school. And I pray that he will
see Suzanne just looking at him, from time to time, with the same loving eyes
as those with which he looks at us, that tell him he is a beautiful Mensch,
that help him know his immeasurable value.
FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
