When Seeing Someone Truly Means Something

Connection is at the core of who we are, and it plays a larger role in our overall health than we might suspect.

I have a small confession: Getting up and going to work has never been an issue for me. I say this more as an overall theme regarding my chosen path in hospitality. I write to you now as a writer and journalist, a field I’m gaining momentum within with each passing day. However, typing out words on a screen by day is not my current full-time profession. Bartending and serving guests at my hotel is how I spend a good chunk of my time.

I like what I do. I enjoy people. There’s a reason for this, and it often begins with me asking a couple simple questions: what do they (customer) do?, and why are they here? I’m fascinated each time I serve someone new. A curious wonder stirs within me. I’m genuinely eager to learn more about them. I’m not sure where this interest comes from, but it’s there and it’s become a foundational part of my essence as a server working in the hospitality industry. It’s also why I enjoy hosting friends and family at my apartment as often as I can. Engagement brightens my day. I not only love learning from others, but about others when they share their lives and experiences with me. There’s something deeply satisfying about forming these interpersonal connections and bonds.

Be that as it may, I preface this opening with a bit of candour, as the story I’m about to tell affected me a great deal. It happened the other day and from an outsiders perspective, probably didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Yet, as you’re about to learn, it clearly was out of the ordinary for me.

An old regular came in, and her situation prompted me to ask one question, albeit a personal one. Part of this had to do with my own thoughts on the matter (more on that later), but obviously regarding her, I was curious what her response might be and how it affected her. It was in that moment after I’d posed my question that something flipped for us both. We could feel it and I realized that at that moment, I was truly seeing her. To better understand what I mean by this, let me back up and give you a bit of clarity.

Hidden within the confines of our busy schedules, so many of us are lost and hardly seen. We work jobs that are often unrewarding. Genuine love and validation seem a distant aberration as we scroll through Tik Tok, Instagram or Tinder. Faced with issues and crises which hamper our psyches day in and day out, our overall well-being suffers from the weight of it all. Drug addiction, alcohol abuse and depression are on the rise, while marriage rates and childbirth plummet. We are a society in plight, and segment of me wonders if part of the remedy is opening our eyes and ears to those around us.

Now for a little story.

They all start the same. Two people walked into my bar and sat down. Their names were Jon and Mary. Like most early interactions with guests, chatter was gracious and cordial on both ends. They were sweet. Charming. In love and retired. He’d been successful in commercial real estate. She’d been his wife, mother of his children and teammate. At the time, they’d been together for over 35 years.

They travelled a lot as they had estates in Maui, Arizona and interior BC. Their lives seemed idyllic. Serene. How a merry couple should live out their golden years: happy, alive and together. As time passed and their stays at my hotel became more and more frequent, our conversations and connection grew. Banter ensued, tequila shots were poured, accompanied by laughter. I enjoyed their company and grew excited whenever they joined me at my bar.

However, I eventually grew to realize and see that all wasn’t perfect. Jon’s health began to deteriorate and as such, so too their brightness. Before long the pandemic had hit and their time in my life ended. Not thinking much of things at the time as everything around me began to close, I look back now at the relationships one builds with a job like mine and how not having that outlet affected individuals such as Jon and Mary. We so often get caught up in our own grind that we invariably forget to stop and think of how those around us are coping.

Several years passed until I would see either of them again. I would never see Jon again.

Mary passed by my bar this past week, alone. It was the first time I’d ever seen her without Jon by her side. She immediately seemed confused whether the lounge was still operating the same as it had previously. She asked to see a menu, and I urged her to perch up where she had so many times before. We began reminiscing and discussing how things were for the both of us. Her voice and demeanour were just as I had remembered: soft, pleasant and endearing. She had a quality I always adored, a motherly way you could say. She commented on my new tattoos and dug deep to get me to share more about my current state of affairs. I told her I was seeing someone, that my journalism career seemed to be moving along nicely, and that I’d done some travelling recently. I was happy and in good spirits. We shared a laugh, and I kept on with my duties. She ate her salad and read from her phone.

The day had been light for my colleague and I, so I found myself returning to her often to chat. I sensed we both wanted the same thing. It was weird at first, seeing her all by herself. Jon’s presence loomed large in our past interactions. He laughed deep and heavily. His eyes sparkled whenever he smiled and his skin, flaked with sun spots and freckles, bore the resemblance of a man his age, one who’d found joy in his life’s journey. He wore big gold rings and ate prawn tempura with a fury. He delighted in a classic Cadillac margarita with a heavy dose of Grand Marnier. Tequila made him giggle, while being mischievous helped him feel young. I missed his energy. Their partnership. This sensation prompted me to ask her something personal. I wanted to know how her mental state was. If she felt lonely, and if she’d ever consider dating again? Part of this came from my curiosity, but also from what I was witnessing in my own life.

In the time that I’ve spent working as a young writer, podcaster and journalist, I’ve come to view things with a more active lens. It’s helped me to listen with a sharper focus. To slow my own thoughts and ideas so I can better understand those of others. It isn’t easy, and I commend anyone who has mastered this skill set. It’s in me only to ask questions and to wonder this and that, which means listening, and fine-tuning that part of my brain has taken some time to develop. My friends and family will probably still tell you that I suck at it, but hey, at least I’m trying. Nevertheless, Mary’s reverence to converse reminded me in part of what it’s been like connecting with my mother recently and how important it is for her.

This made me think: Is human connection the most important component in late life happiness and fulfilment and if so, what does that entail?

To begin, just over a decade ago my mother was diagnosed schizophrenic. To this day, I still struggle with her condition. Part of me feels a good portion of her issues stem more from a lack of connection and less to do with her illness. I’m not a doctor, so my analysis of her condition stands in stark contrast with medical science, but as you’ll come to see below, my thoughts regarding her life and mental state are not mine alone, and I’d ask you to keep this in mind.

I think one of the biggest fears we all share as humans is dying alone. We grind day and night to better enjoy the spoils of life, but throughout this journey we are driven to form relationships with others. Romantic love has no limits when attained with dedicated reciprocation. It has a boundless effect on our overall well-being and health. When faced with the prospect of “nobody cares for me”, our mental focus drops while we decipher the meaning of our predicament. Loneliness creeps in, and with it, a weakened emotional and physical state. I’ve seen this happen with my mother a lot. For context, she’s had a difficult life. She grew up in a home where mental, physical and sexual abuse occurred. She ran away from home at an early age, got married then divorced and had five children by the age of 25. Part of who she is and what her life became is on her, however, a lot of her struggles can and should be attributed to her upbringing and the trauma she experienced. She was never given a strong and stable foundation from which to grow and develop, and as such, many of her issues were passed down to my siblings and I. One of the most glaring and disruptive forces in her life is her constant need for connection and reassurance from her five children. When she doesn’t receive either one, or both of these, from us, chaos ensues. She acts out, becomes disruptive, communicates angrily and, will, if she feels ignored, do things for a reaction just to spite us. One such instance happened just last month prior to my visiting her for the first time in over 2 years (thanks COVID-19).

I had just landed in the city. It was my first visit back since December 2019 and I was eager to see her and the rest of my family. In the time that I’d been away my older sister and brother had helped my mother move into a better apartment in a safer neighbouhood. At the time she’d been under the guise of the provincial government and their support system for individuals who suffered from mental afflictions, chiefly bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in my mother’s case. For years as prescribed to her by the provincial health region, she was receiving bi-weekly medication injections. This was in conjunction with a prescription for daily oral medication which she was too administer to herself. I was never a fan of this level of medication for her as it dulled her personality and made her less of the animated mom I’d known and grown up with. However, I also tried recognizing that part of who I’d come to grow up with was someone who struggled with these issues and how she normally was or had been for me wasn’t entirely healthy or normal for her or me also. Even so, I still feel that the medication she was on wasn’t the be all end all cure/remedy for her life. With heavy doses flowing through her veins her struggles with acceptance and a burning need for connection remained the same.

To tie this all back to Mary, what soon became apparent to me with regards to my mother was the fact that she felt invisible all too often. Her illness forced her into retirement. It caused her to act in ways which no longer resembled who she was. With no romantic partner in her life and with her children all grown, her life began to lack for reason and loneliness. She spent a great deal of her time socializing with a friend in her building, but struggling to forge connected bonds with us, her children, her self worth crumbled and she deteriorated. Part of this was on her and some of the choices she had and continued to make (communication breakdowns), while a lot resided with past traumas and the years of continued battles of self worth.

The men in her life had been abusive in all forms. She stuck around and gravitated towards them because it felt normal as she lacked inner self respect. To gain any happiness she looked where any mother would, to her children. She needed us to see her, to give her life meaning. There’s nothing wrong in this to an extent, but a person’s well-being cannot hinge on one aspect. It isn’t healthy. Hence why what happened just before my visit is so startling.

That first night as my sister, brother, brother-in law and I walked up to her apartment, we were drawn immediately to her living room window and the apparent emptiness of her apartment. There was nothing there. With the moonlight shining high above us, we all looked down to see her sitting on a small chair with one lamp beside her examining her curtain. She was in a manic state and impossibly out of sorts when we walked in to greet her. She was deliriously happy to see me but oblivious to her surroundings whatsoever. It was as if nothing mattered. In tears immediately, we all asked her what happened with her belongings. Visibly upset, my sister relayed emphatically how much work and effort she and my brother had put in to getting her apartment settled. “She had everything!”, she’d relay to me numerous times over while I wondered where everything had gone.

“It was all here just last week!”, she’d say over and over.

Not one to lie or shy away in that moment while we asked her repeatedly where everything had gone, my mother detailed her decision to give her belongings to a family on a different floor. Conditioned to read between the lines when dealing with her, we all knew immediately that what she’d engineered was out of spite and rage. This hadn’t been the first time she’d done something along these lines. To make a point, she acted in defiance. Why? Because she felt alone. We are all she has and when that reciprocation lacked on our part, her mental state deteriorated. It’s why I wondered about Mary. Was her loss of Jon enough to send her spiralling? Did she have any other outlets for connection at her age? Was she open to finding someone new if her will desired?

An eery connection regarding all of this comes from Dr. and author, Gabor Maté, who coincidentally has released a new book detailing how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. It’s titled, ‘The Myth of Normal — Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. He prefaces in his introduction the following statement:

“This book, The Myth of Normal, sets its sights on something far more encompassing. I have come to believe that behind the entire epidemic of chronic afflictions, mental and physical, that beset our current moment, something is amiss in our culture itself, generating both the rash of ailments we are suffering and, crucially, the ideological blind spots that keep us from seeing our predicament clearly, the better to do something about it. These blind spots — prevalent throughout the culture but endemic to a tragic extent in my own profession — keep us ignorant of the connections that bind our health to our social-emotional lives.
Another way of saying it: chronic illness — mental or physical — is to a large extent a function or feature of the way things are and not a glitch; a consequence of how we live, not a mysterious aberration.
From a wellness perspective, our current culture, viewed as a laboratory experiment, is an ever-more globalized demonstration of what can go awry. Amid spectacular economic, technological, and medical resources, it induce countless humans to suffer illness born of stress, ignorance, inequality, environmental degradation, climate change, poverty, and social isolation. It allows millions to die prematurely of diseases we know how to prevent or of deprivations we have more than enough resources to eliminate.” — pages 2–3

Much of what Dr. Maté distills here confirms many of my own previous assumptions regarding health and illness. We are a culmination of the total sum of our lives and not just one set of pieces. My mother suffers from schizophrenia to a large extent, but a solid reasoning of her overall state does come from her emotional well-being and the love and connections she continues to forge and have. Seeing how she has positively and negatively reacted to bonds with us, her children, has confirmed to me the importance of this part of her life. She is not alone in this condition, as humans, we need and crave attachement with others. It’s in us to socialize. But part of maintaining a happy and whole state comes from our own personal well of stasis and contentment. My mother lacks for this foundation and as such, suffers in various ways accordingly. It’s why I wondered about Mary. Was she similar? Did she also struggle for personal strength and confidence?

More from Dr. Maté:

“A recurring theme — maybe the core theme — in every talk or workshop I give is the inescapable tension, and for most of us an eventual clash, between two essential needs: attachment and authenticity. This clash is ground zero for the most widespread form of trauma in our society: namely, the “small-t” trauma expressed in a disconnection from the self even in the absence of abuse or overwhelming threat.
Attachment, as defined by my colleague and previous co-author, the psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld, is the drive for closeness — proximity to others, in not only the physical but the emotional sense as well. Its primary purpose is to facilitate either caretaking or being taken care of. For mammals and even birds, it is indispensable for life. For the human infant especially — at birth among the most immature, dependent, and helpless animals, and remaining that way for by far the longest period of time — the need for attachment is mandatory.
Hardwired into our brains, our drive for attachment is mediated by vast and complex neural circuits governing and promoting behaviours designed to keep us close to those without whom we cannot live. For many people, these attachment circuits powerfully override the ones that grant us rationality, objective decision making, or conscious will — a fact that explains much about our behaviour across multiple realms.” — page 105

I’d like you to circle back to the last sentence here. I strongly agree with Dr. Maté’s rationale regarding the powerful emotions that deride our abilities when attachment is threatened or not received. Objectivity is thrown out the window, even in the face of sound judgement. My mother, desperately in need of attachment, lost her ability to make objective decisions while trying to process her state and how she went about gaining what she craved. Say what you will about the responsibilities of children regarding how they interact with their parents, I understand as my mother’s son, someone who has chosen to live in a different city from her for the past 13 years, the anguish she feels at times with us, and possibly with me specifically. My siblings shoulder a larger role in respect of her needs since they live closer to her. They make time for her often, but as most of us could, probably not enough. Nevertheless, the catch 22 of her current state sadly limits her ability to garner new relationships with other individuals, therefore rendering her feeling the way she does. I say limits with a touch of caution, as her actions play a role in her life. At some point, a person, if capable, has to participate in their own rescue. Being solely dependent upon us, her children, for her happiness is not a recipe for success.

“…Unsatisfactory attachments can wreak havoc even with adult physiology. What distinguishes our earliest attachment relationships — and, crucially, the coping styles we develop to maintain them — is that they form the template for how we approach all our significant relationships, long after we have grown out of the do-or-die-phase. We carry them into interactions with spouses, partners, employers, friends, colleagues: into all aspects of our personal, professional, social, and even political lives. It follows that attachment is a major concern of the culture — as we see, in trivial form, in popular media gossip about who loves, leaves or lies to whom. Attachment — along with attachment frustration, as in “satisfaction” that we, along with Mick Jagger, can’t get none of — is never far from our minds.” — page 106

Mary’s life was full with Jon by her side. He was her counterweight to life for over 40 years. Losing him and his role in her life was incalculable. I don’t ever expect her to get over it. Nor should she try. Remembering him daily is a precious gift and she should relish in that activity. Little reminders of his imprint on her will keep his memory alive and well. But, as with everything in this world, time soldiers on. Her life must move forward. I chose to interact with her the other day as I always had. It was weird at first, but comforting the more time we conversed. I tried to see her as she was then and how might her state be. Was she going to be okay? I wasn’t sure at first, and I was slightly concerned for her moving forward if I’m to be honest. How was she going to replace what Jon’s love provided for her? She was going to have to if her well of attachment and connection were going to be filled. Seeing how one can lose oneself if too much is put in one basket as you could say, showcases the importance of diversity, openness and a willingness to adapt when life’s changes alter our world. Even with this knowledge, I fully understand it isn’t easy.

My mother, for all her grace and big heart in raising my siblings and I, endured a tough life. Plenty was out of her control while some was with the choices she made along the way. You could say the same for everyone of us if you looked closely. We are the products of our best thinking in the moment. How she adapted and learned to cope at an early age most certainly affected her into adulthood. To feel content and whole, she needs consistent care and attention. It’s what fills her attachment quota. I’m learning this. For Mary, before she departed my bar, she relayed to me a new bond she’d forged with her housekeepers children. Three young ones from the Philippines, whom in her own words, “have become my defacto grandchildren.” Jon’s loss brought sadness and strife. COVID-19, coincidentally added a new, positive, layer for her to focus on. Three young souls full of innocence and curiosity more than added to her attachment needs. They brought meaning to her life and saw her with love. Regardless of whatever human interaction you find yourself in, at the end of the day, being seen and seeing someone is truly all that matters.

It all begins with a choice.

CULTUREJamie MahOctober 7, 2022Gabor MatéComment