My sister-in-law is a professional photographer — and a very good one at that. When she visits our home, I find myself peppering her with the questions of an amateur photographer. That is to say, my questions.
“There’s something not quite right with my camera,” I confess over coffee and empty breakfast plates during her most recent visit. “It works. I can take good enough photos with it. But … it’s like the lens is a little foggy.”
“You can’t see through your lens?” she asks. She’s rightly perplexed.
“Well, I can,” I confirm. “I mean, I’ve been taking decent photos with it for a while. But there’s something off. Other people have been able to use the camera without any trouble, so it must be me. Or something I’m doing.” Or, I’m slowly going blind.
She furrows her eyebrows, curious. “Can I see it?”
I produce the device in question and pass it to her. She takes it in her hands, studying the settings, the buttons, the works.
“How long has it been like this?”
“Well…”
She grins, pointing at a dial sitting plain and obvious near the camera’s viewfinder. “I think this is your problem,” she says, gently moving the dial back and forth. “You need to adjust this. It’s like you’re at the eye doctor.”
I shake my head. “Wow,” I say. “How embarrassing.”
In this era of easily accessible, on-demand video tutorials, novel-length wiki pages, LinkedIn Learning modules and opinionated Reddit users, I likely appear insane for not spending a wee bit of time investigating my laughably simple problem. I could’ve saved myself a bit of embarrassment — not to mention ocular confusion. But I’m not upset with the outcome. I prefer having a conversation with a real person who can look me in the eyes, think through my unique problem, listen to how the issue is affecting my own day-to-day and then quite literally hold my hand and show me how I might do better, be better.
I insisted on in-person mandolin lessons because I wanted someone to study how I was holding the instrument, pulling my fingers this way and that until I had it right. I seek out colleagues to show me where I’ve gone awry in video editing because I’m just as interested in hearing their own approaches to and lessons learned from navigating complex software as I am in completing the project at hand.
There’s a real difference, I think, between receiving information and technical expertise — important as those things are — and inviting someone else’s lived experience into dialogue with your immediate problems, projects and dreams. And yet, we’re tempted to close ourselves off from engaging others with the knowledge and experiences we need. It’s easy to scour the internet for how-tos and tutorials that we can read and watch without ever bothering another living soul.
Why? Are we embarrassed? Are we reluctant to risk a conversation? Do we want to appear already all-knowing, never in need of another’s unique contribution?
I think about the pride that insists we never risk appearing vulnerable in front of another human being and the humility it takes to admit we simply can’t know it all. I think about the honor at stake in appearing all-knowing, confident and cool, and the rejection we court when we tell someone we need them to look long and hard at our shortcomings. I think about how one path leads to encounter and another to isolation.
And ultimately, I can’t ignore the fact that St. Ignatius counsels us to always walk the way of humility and rejection because that is the way toward Christ and toward community — and how the other direction, the one marked by the Standard of the Enemy, insists on shoring up pride and honors but ultimately leaves us alone and anxious.
Here’s why: The truth still stands that we cannot and will not ever know it all. We’ll always need other people. God has made us to be in community. But are we willing to go to others to learn? Or, do we prefer to pretend we can go it alone?
All this from a breakfast conversation over your inability to operate a camera? you ask.
Yes! Because God is in these simple, quiet moments. And so, it is in these simple, quiet moments that we set the stones in place for our own path to God. It is in these simple, quiet moments that we choose to encounter the depths of one another — or we choose to wallow in isolation.
