Appearing

How do we genuinely learn to see the "face" of the Other? Is it possible that we need to first "see" ourselves, to perceive our own alterity, to accept about ourselves what does not fit into any category, system, or method of interpretation. Does not embracing the alterity of the my friend and my neighbor, not begin with my own self-acceptance?

Perhaps I have "invented" a self, a persona, a "face", that is not a face at all, but an appearance, something that I want you to believe about me, but a something that is only a trace, or a suggestion of the true self. If you are to respond to my alterity, must you be forced to run an obstacle course, jumping through hoops, as if your experience of me was "parcours"?

The true self is shy, reticent, unsure, vulnerable. The true self, the "me" is characterized by a nakedness, and a more-than-weakness. I don't want to admit it to you. I don't want you to see it. Perhaps, not even I want to look at it. Yet, my alterity presents itself to me, in the privacy of my own existence, in the same faltering way. It is as if I become split between the "me" I want others to perceive, and the genuine "me" which may be scarcely known to me.

I write my story. But the narrative is continually interrupted by the self that is asking to be seen, to appear, to become visible to the outside world. My plot lines, characterizations, themes, scenery, and scripts are fragile and in danger of collapse when read by the self. Yet,the self makes him/her self known in me. Yes, there is biology, gender, culture, difference. But is not the true self beyond biology, beyond gender, beyond stereotypes. Has not the Apostle Paul centered us in this reality by saying that "In Christ, there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free"? Am I not a unique blend of humanness, unmarked on any map, asking to be traversed, explored, even dwelled within? Does not the Christ event call me to that centered unique me?

My self is authoritative, but as Levinas is careful to say, not forceful. There is a difference between authority and force. Just as God cannot force us to reckon with his alterity, neither can I force you--or even me!--to reckon with my alterity--that which does not submit to any category of explanation. I am me, and that is it. I can be nothing else in truth and in fact.

So, isn't that what I seek? My true self? Do I not want you to respond to who I actually am--not what I have invented myself to be? Then, am I not called to be authentic? To allow myself to be. As Herschel said, it is not "what we are to be", but "how we are to be" that is the question.