Why We Need to be Heard

The self is not something one possesses, nor an object that can be examined from the outside. We are not closed-off entities that come to know themselves solely through introspection. Rather, the self happens. And it happens, above all, before others.

To be seen by another is not to be watched or evaluated; it is to be recognized. There is an immense difference between a gaze that measures us and a gaze that reveals us. The first reduces us; the second opens us. And it is in this opening that, as Gabriel Marcel suggests, the self finds its truth. We all intuit this experience. There are things about ourselves that we only discover when someone else names them, when someone grasps a gesture, an intention, a wound, or a strength we ourselves had overlooked. It is as if the gaze of the other were a deeper mirror—one that does not reflect the surface, but what is at stake in what we are.

That is why not being seen hurts so much. Not being recognized in what one is, or in what one is trying to be, leaves the self suspended—without a place. And here something fundamental appears: it is through the gaze of the other that I discover my place in the world. In the encounter with the other, I cease to be an abstraction and become someone situated, someone who occupies a place, someone who matters to someone. Without that “you” who receives me, who listens without seeking to possess, who observes without judging, the self remains incomplete.

It is not about depending on the other, but about understanding that human existence is always co-existence: my being does not unfold in isolation, but in an in-between, in that shared space where myself encounters a face that recognizes it. To be seen, then, is not a passive act. It is an experience that commits us. When someone recognizes me, when someone allows me to be before them, they also invite me to take up a place, to assume responsibility for who I am and who I may become.

And perhaps for this reason, even without putting it into words, we desperately seek to be seen. It is not vanity; it is an ontological vocation: for only when someone recognizes us does our self become a presence. There, in that encounter, we discover something that would be almost impossible to perceive alone: that we have a place in the world.