I was lucky enough to grow up in a high school that emphasized and encouraged helping other people through service. This is probably the reason why I always loved participating in social action events. So naturally, when I got to college, I made sure that I joined an organization in the sector-based cluster. But even after all those years of outreaches, it was only last year and in that organization that I concretely experienced the trauma that is The Face.
I am the worst when it comes to faces and names. I easily forget who a person is, what they look like or where I’ve met them. More often than not I resort to categorizing people in order to remember them. By course. By org. By interests. By the friends they hang out with.
During one of my org’s events, I had arrived late and the program was already halfway through. Kids and Ateneans alike were all over the place. Ashley was one of those kids. I had played with her just once or twice, months prior to that day. But the moment she saw me, she ran up to me, said my name and hugged me tightly. She had treated me not just as one of the Ates and Kuyas that fought for her attention, she had treated me like a friend. One that she hadn’t seen in so long. It was the most humbling of experiences. In that moment, I couldn’t generalize her anymore. I couldn’t just describe her as one of the kids with cancer. She was her own person. She was the eldest in a family of three. She was a girl who loved to sing. She was someone who smiled whenever I pretended she was an “artista.” She was just Ashley, different from all the rest. And I felt horrible for not thinking of her as that way before.
The word trauma sounds pretty harsh. It connotes much negativity, but I think Levinas got it right. Seeing The Face is traumatic. We experience it as a shock that brings us out into the world. It has the ability to change our entire perspective on things. It can even change how act in the world. The Face is invisible. We hide it behind characteristics and categories— simply because it is easier. We tend to totalize the other because it’s easier to understand them based on the meaning that we ourselves set. But the Face is not a characteristic or a an idea— it is an experience that we have to be continually conscious about.
The phenomenon of The Face is a traumatic but necessary experience, and I am grateful that it exists in the world.
