If you clicked through to read this, it might be because you:

1. are in some meaningful relationships you care about
2. Googled “Avatar” and are on the 847th search page
3. are looking for points of disagreement with the guy arrogant enough to include ‘Relationships 901′ in the title (hell, that’s what I’d do)

Whatever the reason, I’m glad you made it to the third paragraph. (I win.) But you must know: I don’t care what you know conceptually about relationships. I want to know if you are seeing people. And I want to know if they see you.

Granted, Avatar stole some of my thunder here; more on that in a moment. But this post was fueled by a revelation I had to share. Because we’re so laser-focused on Twitter lists, making and keeping friends, networking, and social media that we’ve forgotten what to do once we are actually in a relationship: See each other both literally (being in the same physical place) and figuratively (understanding the context of the person, situation, and relationship).

But no pontificating here. It’s not a complete journey without your luscious input. You lushes. So, like the Chemical Bros. said, the brothaz gonna work it out. You + me = us.

Another instigator here was Cesar Inserny, who wrote a fantastic post last week about the loss of real people connections, and how he missed “actually meeting face to face with people.” Really? Yeah, man! You’ve nailed it! Could it be that simple?

Maybe, but that’s not the whole story.

You Probably Can’t See Me

If you saw the movie Avatar, you noticed that the Na’vi people exchanged the greeting, “I see you” on various occasions. For all the James Cameron worship going on right now, I’m afraid this wasn’t originally his idea, nor that of the film writers. In 2005, I read this amazing excerpt by Peter Senge et. al. about the phrase, “I see you”:

Among the tribes of northern Natal in South Africa, the most common greeting, equivalent to “hello” in English, is the expression: Sawu bona. It literally means, “I see you.” If you are a member of the tribe, you might reply by saying ‘Sikhona, “I am here.” The order of the exchange is important: until you see me, I do not exist. It’s as if, when you see me, you bring me into existence. This meaning, implicit in the language, is part of the spirit of ubuntu, a frame of mind prevalent among native people in Africa below the Sahara. The word ubuntu stems from the folk saying Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu, which, from Zulu, literally translates a: “A person is a person because of other people”. – from The 5th Discipline Field Book; Strategies for Building a Learning Organization

Ah. Beautiful right?

So dead on target. While this idea of mutual validation may not be new, it seems to have been forgotten. Our constant immersion in technology, TMZ, mental fitness, probiotics, yogurt, Tiger Woods, Scott Brown, evvvvvvvverything . . . keeps us distracted.

Oh and it’s our fault. A friend confessed to me recently, “Sometimes when I’m in a conversation, I can’t even suffer waiting through the pause in the middle of a sentence! I’m like . . come ON! Get to the point . . and meanwhile start fiddling with my phone for Twitter updates.” We’ve taken A.D.D. to ridiculous extremes, so we can’t really see each other like we used to.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE HERE, BE HERE

A while back I released a 12-question Availability Survey which basically helped people to gauge “how available” they are.  A telling study for sure, but most who braved the test discovered they were “Hyper-Available” (too available for whatever, whenever) and that this was detrimental to their focus, productivity, and – shocker – maintaining healthy relationships.

Do you answer your cell phone during a live conversation with a key relationship? Do you close your laptop when others are in the room to be with you? Do you just hear “blah blah blah” and prepare what you’re going to say next? I’m guilty of all of these infractions, all while breaking some existential speed limit.

The thing is, if you’re going too fast, you can’t see what’s right in front of you. Sometimes it’s a person, sometimes it’s a problem. Let me give you a personal tale of near-sightedness that almost got ugly.

A few weeks back I had been copied on an email correspondence from a disgruntled mother of a student at my daughter’s school. She was concerned about some book that didn’t align with her perfect doctrine, was blaming the author (and Satan) for all kinds of chaos, and warning everyone to stay away from the impending evil in the book.

This sort of tomfoolery doesn’t sit so well with me. So, being the world-saving Incredible Hulk theorist and writer that I am, I was not only going to Reply All

to the parents and teacher of the Pre-K class about the perils and annoyances of uber-religiosity, I was FIRST going to send a missive to the school’s headmaster. This e-mail draft (my nth mistake) was my piece de resistance* - 14 crafted paragraphs of dissent, instruction, perspective, and anaylsis as to why a limitarian, ghetto mindset should remain far from the school and its children. (*French for stupid, misguided document)

As I sent this craptacular script of doom to my wife for proofreading, she said, “Um, I dunno let’s sleep on it.” Turns out this is code for, “Oh, sweetheart, you know better than to send that.” The next morning, I re-read the message, and something was just wrong.

There was no context. The headmaster couldn’t see me.

Granted, I believe what I wrote in the email. But it didn’t matter.  Because while I had met him on several occasions, glad-handed him, spoken with him, and actually liked him, he hadn’t been in the trenches with me. He hadn’t visited me in the hospital.  He hadn’t ever sat upon my couch or shared a Guinness with me.  He didn’t know I own the complete Roger Ramjet collection on DVD.

Do you see what happened? The complete lack of relational context would have rendered my words empty of meaning.  So, I conclude, the heaviness of the “stuff” of conversations is relative to the intimacy level of the relationship. I believe this applies universally.

<DELETE> I clicked on the email. Thanks, babe, for seeing me.

THE WAY IT SHOULD BE

The aforementioned blog post by Inserny guts the fish perfectly:

I remember so many passionate-ultra long arguments on my conservative friend’s blogs and on my own. It felt great to think, and to write, and to read, and to talk shit, and to get insulted, and to be a smartass, and to get home to read all the comments and start all over again. Fun, fun, fun. I think about it and I smile because it was so pleasurable! Where did it f***ing go?

The beauty of this:  they don’t agree, necessarily.  But the connection – the reciprocity that every healthy relationship must have – is there.  What’s underneath the “I see you,” is the “I am here.”  This solidifies the safety and context needed to happily rip each other apart over coffee and biscotti.

It also helps that these guys made time to meet in the same space.  There’s no substitute for the tactile experience; for breathing the same air; for sharing in person with both eyeballs seeing.  It’s like the difference between listening to a drumline on audio cassette versus being on the 50 yard line as bass and snare drums rocket into your face.  Powerful.

My hunch is that we could literally double the amount of time we spend on in-person meetings, while cutting in half the amount of time we spend on virtual networking.  Again, just a hunch, and I’m all for “priming the right relationships” using cool tools like Twitter.  But we can’t really see everything here; the virtual stuff is so “surface” that we must move relationships forward – eventually – with the shared air Inserny talks about.  That’s where growth happens and relationships flourish.

But now I’m on the verge of pontificating.  Comments?  Cries of outrage?  Let me know if you’re seeing me.