On The Value Of The Visual
Not Knowing How He Looks
Before I came, I kept circling one small thought: What does he look like?
It seemed harmless enough, just curiosity. But underneath it was worry — about him, and about me. What if I didn’t measure up? What if he didn’t? What if the entire experience hinged on something as arbitrary as looks?
We live in a world where faces are currency. Every profile, every post, every meeting begins with the same exchange of surface. When I couldn’t find his photo online, I felt unsteady, as if missing the coordinates that tell us who someone is supposed to be.
But that not knowing turned out to be the first step of the practice.
It forced me to meet the moment without preconceptions — to realise how much energy I waste assessing, comparing, imagining.
When I finally met him, it was both ordinary and disarming: no first impression to confirm or undo, no image to defend. Just another man, calm, unguarded, quietly there.
I kept my eyes closed
For the first few minutes, I kept my eyes closed. Not from discomfort, but from curiosity about what it would be like to listen to presence instead of judging it. Without sight, everything sharpened — the tone of his breathing, the warmth of the room, the small creak of floorboards.
I realised how much of my attention in life is spent on the outer surface of things, even my own.
An act of quiet trust
I had worried that looks mattered — that his, mine, anyone’s, could make or break what followed. But they didn’t. Without that noise, I could simply be. My body didn’t feel like something to display or conceal, only to inhabit. His lack of a photograph wasn’t secrecy.
It was an act of quiet trust, a reminder that the meeting was never about appearances to begin with.
Too much of life is spent trying to see or be seen. Here, I learned the other side of seeing: how to let someone exist beside me without judging, naming, or needing them to fit an image.
In that sense, not knowing what he looked like became the most honest beginning possible.
