Make sure loved ones feel ‘seen’ whenever they arrive

I had a low-budget weekend, which involved doing a lot of nothing, a bit of something and priceless time spent cheaply with people I love.

Today, I came across an old article by Deborah Farmer Kris, about whom I wrote a few years ago, as I was searching for a deeper reason behind feeling so content about my weekend.

There isn’t one, because the truth is (as it usually is) quite simple.

We attach value to things that hold no intrinsic value, and we tend to take for granted the things that money can’t buy.

I know this, because I watch a lot of reality television, when I’m in a fluffy mood.

And so, when we are in a space that holds true value, we intrinsically know it.

It feels good, and the feeling lasts long after the moment has passed.

A sure-fire trick to know that you are in a valuable space is in how people respond to you, and you to them.

This is something that Kris, LifeCompass parent educator and founder of Parenthood365, taught me three years ago.

A question that we should ask ourselves, on occasion is: does your face light up when someone you love, or like, walks into the room?

“Many years ago, I heard an Oprah interview with the novelist Toni Morrison ... (she) described how, when her children came into the room, she thought she was showing care by fussing over their appearance, ‘to see if they had buckled their trousers or if their hair was combed or if their socks were up.’

“But that was not what they were looking for, she said. Instead, she offered a different measure for care.

“‘Does your face light up when your kid walks (into) a room?’

“Does your expression say, ‘I’m so glad that you are here?’”

No matter the occasion, my grandmother did exactly this.

In fact, arriving at her house was as exciting as the anticipation of the contents of her kitchen (Ouma rusks, a magic cookie tin, white toast with apricot jam).

Before you’d unlatched the lock on the little gate, she had flung open the door, utterly thrilled — with accompanying shrieks of delight — to see you.

I felt like the most important person in her life, thanks to that ‘hello’.

Later, Kris discovered that she’d heard incorrectly. Morrison had said that your face should light up whenever any child — not just yours — appears in your space.

And she wasn’t just talking about parenting, Kris explains.

“She was talking about our holy obligation to see the dignity in every person — a dignity that Mr Rogers offered children every day when he signed off his show with, ‘You’ve made this day a special day, by just ... being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.’

“Harvard psychologist Dr Susan David introduced me to the word ‘Sawubona’, a Zulu greeting. It means ‘I see you’.”

Essentially, she says, everybody wants to be seen.

The concept of “I see you” means creating space in your heart and home for someone else.

My friends do that.

I know that I do that — sometimes with dramatic stage effects, but always sincerely.

If I ’ m having a bad day, or they are, we check in to let each other now that we’ve been seen and heard, and that someone is holding that space.

Often, that is more than enough to brush away the bad stuff.

As a child, I didn’t know that my grandmother was “seeing” me — but I felt it.

And that’s exactly as it should be.