Can I Get a Witness?

Often, when I am lost in my thoughts, I wonder what it is that I most long for in a relationship -- a one-on-one, forever and a day partnership. It wouldn't be enough for us to have similar interests and enjoy the same lifestyle. It wouldn't be enough to share thoughts and beliefs, values and principles. It wouldn't even be enough for our love-making to be passionately intense and uplifting. No, what I want and need can be had in an instant, in the flicker of a candle or the creak of a worn oak stair. It is a moment shared, a holographic breath of time which is at once both a sojourn and an eternity.

In the movie Shall We Dance Susan Sarandon's character speaks of love and marriage, speaks of needing a witness to one's life. "Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness," she says. That line caught my breath. Witnessing is so much more than mere observation, more than seeing and acknowledging what most everyone else sees. It is perceiving the Truth a woman is afraid to believe, the Truth a man has been taught to hide. And in such moments we know that we have been seen, free of judgments and projections, free of adulterations, free of ego.

We all know, I believe, what is at our core; we all know about our strengths, our talents, our kindnesses and gifts, even when we pretend not to, but sometimes it isn’t until these parts of ourselves are witnessed by another that we are able to lift the shroud of fear and step into our fullness. Simply put, witnessing is seeing the truth of the observed rather than the observer. It is beholding the beloved through the eyes of the beloved.

It is this I long for ... even for just a breath of time.