One year, on the last night of a summer camp I was the director of, a camper who had just performed a picture perfect impression of me in the closing talent show, came to find me. He was feeling mixed emotions about leaving camp and returning home, and wanted to talk. We talked about his experience of the summer, the things that stood out to him, the memories he was leaving with, the changes he’d gone through. At one point in our conversation he turned to me and asked, why are you all so nice here?
The question caught me off guard, and it took a while for me to understand what he was getting at. He wasn’t remarking on a personality trait that happened to be common in our staff members. He was asking about our pedagogy. He was wondering what it was that allowed us as a staff to choose to be kind and caring. He was asking what it was that allowed us to make so much space for him as a camper, to not be triggered by his actions and behaviors, to not respond to him with harshness even when he was not showing up at his best. He wanted to know what made us continue choosing love, even in the stressful moments.
As an educator I often find myself in community building circles in which a common prompt for introductions is to share, along with your name, one of your super powers. The prompt is meant to invite us to think about the strengths that we have and can offer a group. Answers to this kind of prompt can get very fun and creative. I love to hear what people recognize as their strengths and the ways they find to communicate them as super powers.
An answer that I often give is that I have x-ray vision. I have an ability to see through people’s armor, to look past the protective layers that we put up, to catch a glimpse of who we really are underneath the masks that we wear: behind the fears, the trauma, the shame, the projections. It is this superpower that allows me to, as my camper put it, “be so nice” or as I would say, to choose love.
Like any superpower, this is an ability that has to be honed, a skill that has to be practiced. Superman doesn’t walk around seeing through buildings, and I don’t walk around seeing through people’s masks. I have to choose it. I have to remember that I believe that deep down we all want love, we want to love, and we want to be loved. So, to activate this superpower I take a breath, I look at the person in front of me, I allow my eyes to soften, and I let go of whatever projections I am placing on them.
It isn’t always easy. There are many people and types of behaviors that continue to trigger me. I do not always succeed at activating my x-ray vision. But when I do turn my ex-ray vision on it allows me to see beyond the hard layers we put up and into the essence of a person, into their soul. And by seeing the essence of a person, it makes it easier to choose to love them. It makes it easier to choose love when I might otherwise choose fear.
There is a lot to be scared of in the world right now. We are living in a time of deep uncertainty, acute tension, and informational overload. We are living in a time where emotions are heightened and suspicion is much easier to access than trust. We are living in a time where the masks are thick and the armor is heavy. The illusion of stability that many of us were raised to believe in is cracking, the systems that had been presented to us as stable and static are in a process of collapse, and whether we liked the status quo as it was or fought against it with all our might, to see it so rapidly dissolve can be quite unsettling.
It is hard in this kind of moment to show up at one’s best, and even harder to see the best in others. It is hard to choose love when there is so much to be afraid of. And yet, choosing love, finding ways to see the best in others, to see through each other’s armor, to look past each other’s fears, underneath each other’s masks might be our best hope, might just be the key to our survival.