I was listening to music today and this song played. Whenever I hear this song, I always feel so sad for Janis when she sings it. Whether the song is about Janis looking back, or she was tapping into some very deep feelings of someone around her, I do not know. What I do know is as I listened to it again I thought about how we treat people who are not as pretty as we are.

A very successful and famous singer, and songwriter named Janis Ian wrote a song that swept the nation in 1975. If any other songs, except for a few Country and Western broken heart songs ever came from so deep down in the heart and expressed such raw emotion, I have not heard it. The emotion and desperation, and the ugly truth of life as it is, is captured in the words of Janis’ song.

Here is a short excerpt from Janis Ian’s song, ‘At Seventeen’

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone

I remember in my young and single years, I would be strolling along a sidewalk, or walking in a store, and I would be attracted by some woman’s hair. I would stroll behind her at some distance thinking about how beautiful her hair was. While doing that I would usually be working up the courage to tap her on the shoulder and speak to her. After all she had to beautiful, who else would have hair that shimmers and tumbles across her shoulders?

Most of the time, probably because I was shy, with no effort on my part, the young woman would turn to look at something that caught her eye. Maybe she sensed someone was looking at her, and wanted to see who it was. Faster than the urge hit me to talk to her, the urge would leave me. She would have bad acne scars, or something else detracting from her perfect self that I had built up in my mind.

It was one of those things in my life I did not like in myself. I worked on this flaw deep inside of me. It is quite hard to see some people as real people, and not see them as most people, which is completely ignore them. This time, after Janis Ian finished her song, and before I started typing, I wondered in the space of a few moments how many opportunities I passed up before I changed myself.

I am not sure where the behavior comes from. Almost without exception we all share this same behavior flaw. We don’t see people who are too fat, skinny, crippled, or otherwise not normal by common standards. For many of those people we choose not to see, invisibility has been their life.

Some of these people have put up barriers of their own for protection. Perhaps due to years of pain from thinking someone really wanted to talk to them they build walls. I know one person who I see almost daily, and they rarely turn around when I call their name. I usually have to tap them on the shoulder to get their attention if they are not facing me. Who would be interested in them after all?

I find that like anyone else, they are only people trying to live their life as best they can. Occasionally someone may mistake interest in them for something more, especially if it is someone of the opposite sex having the interest. Someone is paying them some attention, maybe the first and only attention in months. What would you think if after months of invisibility someone showed an interest in you? It may be awkward to define the relationship as friendship, or as an acquaintance, but that awkwardness lasts only a few moments for you. For the other person, it lasts a lifetime.

One more snippet from, ‘At Seventeen’

And dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me.

We have enough isolation in our lives without building more barriers and pretending one or two people we see every day are invisible. By making certain people invisible to us, we make ourselves invisible too. I don’t know how you feel, but I prefer not be invisible to prevent a moment of my attentions being misunderstood.