photo by Lynn H. Wyvill
We’ve all heard the “what you see is what you get” saying. It’s true sometimes, but not always.
For example, I’m looking out the patio door as the leaves turn color and the mums bloom bright yellow and soft brown. What I see is autumn, but that’s not what I’m getting. The temperatures tell me it’s still summer. I put on a sweatshirt in the morning, thinking today is the day that I will get what I see, but it still hasn’t happened.
We see what is in front of us, on the surface. We can only guess at what more there is, if we consider it at all. We look quickly and make assumptions, come up with a story or explanation, only to find later that what we saw is not the entire story or even the correct story. I know I’ve done it too many times to count and frequently, I am wrong, sometimes a little bit, sometimes completely.
People and situations are more complex than whatever we see. I remember being in the memory wing where my dad was staying. A resident was screaming and swearing. I thought it was the result of her dementia. It would have been easy to dismiss the behavior as only that. But a very kind volunteer knew it was more than what she saw. The volunteer knelt down beside the woman and gently said “What’s wrong? Tell me what you need.” The resident calmed down. The volunteer knew it was far more than the dementia behind the cries. It was the need to be seen, heard and listened to.
We can’t always know what pain someone is carrying in their body, what hurt they are carrying in their soul or what trials they are enduring.
I love these words from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
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Lynn H. Wyvill grew up in Washington DC where her favorite activity was sitting under a Japanese red maple tree, watching clouds create pictures in the sky. As a writer, she finds peace and inspiration when hiking in the woods, strolling on sandy beaches, and observing nature’s show in her backyard. Those experiences are captured in her first book, Nature’s Quiet Wisdom. Before writing books, Lynn worked as a radio/TV reporter and writer for the US Department of Agriculture and owned a consulting business that trained professionals on the creation and delivery of effective presentations. She is a lifelong learner, avid reader, small town explorer, and dedicated theater attendee who lives in beautiful Virginia with her husband.