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The Invisible

"Of all the world's errors...the most fundamental [is] the 'erasing' of people, the 'hiding away' of suffering."

One of the ideas I was exposed to in a junior high leadership camp I attended last summer was the notion that there are invisible students. These students, it was implied, needed to be included, made visible. On reflection, there were definitely students this last year at school who fit that idea.

This issue reaches beyond school, though. I got the quote above from Mountains Beyond Mountains, which covers the efforts of one man to end TB in Haiti and elsewhere. The problem of invisibility is pandemic, and like other diseases, there are different varieties.

The first is voluntary invisibility: a person chooses not to stand out in any way, and in fact tries to hide when confronted with the option to stand out, because-- among other reasons-- he or she fears being judged by peers or wants to avoid failure. This involves a need to be self-actualized, a need to reach one's potential. Without a satisfactory view of self, this person chooses not to be known by others.

The second form is involuntary invisibility: a person is made invisible by others. This takes place because those others want to remain unaware of the suffering that these individuals face, because those others have a purpose the attainment of which does not require them, or because those others feel the individuals to be generally unimportant (I'm sure there are other reasons).

Making people visible takes a commitment to invest in someone; a strong set of boundaries; and a clear, refined purpose. It could involve encouraging someone to find his or her niche, helping someone see his or her potential through tutoring, or especially making someone aware of his or her inherent value as a person. The venue to make someone visible can be one of many: a school, a court, a park, your workplace, another country, a nonprofit or government agency, or your home.

You would think that making others visible involves allowing yourself to become invisible. Nothing could be further from the truth, only your audience may not be the one you'd expected.

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