“Sawubona”, I see you...
This ancient African greeting tells a lot about homo sapiens sapiens,
We have an insatiable need for acceptance by our kind,
‘Enlightened’ primitive peoples consider ‘invisibility/ridicule/exile’ the worst form of hell,
Ergo the opposite, acceptance, acknowledgement, respect, equals heaven,
The most serious punishment that could be inflicted by Pygmies was ‘invisibility’,
The Inuit, punished thieves with laughter whenever they encountered them,
Some of the ancient Greeks punished murder by exile, rather than reciprocal murder,
As a consequence, homo sapiens sapiens suffers all sorts of insufferable and barbaric initiation rites in order to ‘belong’...

I marvel, then, how ‘ignorant-Africans’ came up with this advanced psychology thousands of years ago,
To “see” their fellows,
No empty ‘hello’s’ here,
But a meaningful “I see you...”,
Implicitly implying acknowledgement, acceptance, worthiness...,
I guess the women folk among us know something about punishment when they employ their lethal ‘silent-treatment’ eh?

“Sawubona”, I see you...
“Ngikhona”, you would respond, meaning:- ‘I am here’...
Intrinsic in this Zulu salutation and in the appreciative response, is the sagacity that until you ‘saw’ me, I didn’t ‘exist’[funny, quantum physics has more or less come to the same conclusion...]. By acknowledging me, you ‘bring’ me into existence. A Zulu folk proverb clarifies this, “Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu“, meaning “A person is a person because of other people...”
Thus, we are existentially mirrored by our connections to our community and when they really ‘see’ us, they offer a reflection to our inner selves that allows us to deeply connect, to belong...

Try it, look into someone’s eyes and meaningfully say “I see you”, that connection will bring another breadth into your commune with your fellows...

“Sawubona”, I see you...