For a long time, I thought being seen was the same thing as being known.
The distinction never occurred to me.
If people could see enough of who I was, surely they would understand.
Or so I thought.
Yet there have been moments in life when I felt incredibly visible and strangely unseen at the same time.
People saw what was easy to notice.
The accomplishments.
The personality.
The version of me that translated well from a distance.
But understanding seems to require something else.
Something slower.
Something less obvious.
Visibility happens instantly.
Understanding unfolds.
One can be offered to a crowd.
The other is earned through presence.
Perhaps that is why some of the most meaningful parts of a person remain hidden for so long.
Not because they are secrets.
Because they require time.
A photograph can reveal a face.
A conversation can reveal a thought.
But there are parts of us that only reveal themselves through seasons.
Through patience.
Through experience.
There is a tendency to measure connection by attention.
To assume that if we are noticed, we are understood.
Yet the two often travel separate paths.
Attention observes.
Understanding listens.
One gathers information.
The other gathers meaning.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less interested in being recognized and more interested in being understood.
Not by everyone.
Just by the people capable of meeting me there.
The rest no longer feels urgent.
A seed does not ask the forest to watch it grow.
A river does not ask permission to find the sea.
Both simply continue becoming what they already are.
Perhaps we are invited to do the same.
To stop measuring our lives by how visible we are.
To stop confusing attention with connection.
To trust that what is real does not need to be understood by everyone in order to remain true.
For a long time, I thought the goal was to be seen.
Now I wonder if the greater gift is to be known.
And perhaps the rarest gift of all is learning to know ourselves.
La/Nay 
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