How I Want to Feel and Be

Editorial Team - The end of a school year often brings students a mix of emotions, a cocktail of nostalgia and anxiety. A friend of ours, a teacher at a middle high school, recently shared an essay written by one of his pupils that beautifully captures this sentiment. 

This reflection of his student - which we noted down full of amazement when I heard it recounted - offers a poignant view of the deeper journey that the path to truth encompasses. Indeed, the path to truth is only experience.

Here's the excerpt from that essay:

“There would be so many things that I have done over these years that would have stirred something in me, now that everything is coming to an end. I realize more and more how important these years have been for me. What makes me realize this? The nostalgia I feel every time I think that everything is coming to an end. The fear of losing my friends, the fear of losing that serenity I have gained in talking to adults. And then, out of all these things, the one that struck me the most and aroused the strongest emotion in me, so much so that I have a hard time explaining it, was the way my religion teacher looked at me once.

I was totally unaware of this fact during religion class. We listen to him talk to us about many things, discussing with him the meaning and value of things. There was a particular moment: while I was handing in a drawing as an assignment. The professor had asked us to draw Easter, the passion, and the crucifixion, imagining how we would photograph Calvary if we were there. When I handed him the drawing, he looked up and smiled at me. At that moment, the way he looked at me made me feel important and valued.

So many people, when I talk, look into my eyes: my parents, my classmates, my friends, but those eyes look at me differently. It affected me so much that I think I even blushed, but I don't really know why. I tried to look back at the drawing I had brought him, thinking that maybe he was impressed. But actually, it was nothing special; I had done better ones. It was a very simple drawing. Yet when he looked at me like that, for me it was as if he was saying, 'Joan, I see you.' And it was not a passing moment. It's not like the next day everything was gone. For the rest of the day, and for many other days as well, a sense of self-esteem remained with me. Now, unfortunately, it is not always like that, but it is something I would like to feel all the time.

To this day, I still try to find that feeling in the gaze of the professor or a friend, but I have not found it again. I told myself that maybe it didn't depend on the professor, but on a need that I had at that time. Maybe because at home I was a little bit in conflict with my brother, with my parents -- I don't know. But I just know that it was good to feel that way and it's a memory, an emotion I will always carry with me. Because that's how I would always want to feel.”

This essay is a testament to the profound impact that a “gaze”, a look, can generate, even in ordinary moments. It illustrates how “being seen” with a profound sympathy for one's destiny sparks a new sense of esteem and tenderness toward oneself. Such moments though - which are so precious and therefore “memorable” - only occur when our humanity is fully at play, attentive to the needs that reality provokes. We can only generate when we are regenerated, that is, “seen” by such a gaze. This is decisive. This is how I want always to feel, and be.