​​The major absence in my life is recognition. It’s a word that resonates with the feeling that my work is undervalued or even worthless. It carries with it the sense of not being in the world—of invisibility and in a way, of unreality. My work as a therapist also carries this feeling, in that my clients are often the only ones who recognize what I offer, and that recognition lives within the session itself—ephemeral and private. Yet this absence also reveals a conflict: the tension between a desire to live a quiet life of study and contemplation and the longing for recognition—of both my work and the person it represents.

I once believed that recognition was about being in dialogue with other creators, but that now feels like a self-deception. Recognition may symbolize something more fundamental than fame or praise—it may represent ontological affirmation: proof that one exists in the eyes of another and, by being seen, possesses measurable value. Invisibility becomes a metaphor not just for being unseen, but for being unreal. This also raises questions of embodiment: if who I feel myself to be is overlooked by others, does that diminish its reality?

A symbol emerged last fall during an unguided ketamine session for pain relief. It returns to me now with urgency, powerfully resonant with the theme of recognition. In that altered state, I felt as if I had robot hands—a disturbing, multivalent image.

On one level, the symbol reflected the real, physical consequences of inflammation in the cubital tunnel and resulting ulnar nerve damage: stiffness, numbness, and a sense of clumsiness. But on another level, it pointed toward something more abstract: the realization that we have no direct access to reality. Everything we know comes through our senses.

Our senses are organs of mediation—tools that translate the world into signals, which we then assemble into internal simulations. We don’t perceive the world as it is, but as it is filtered, interpreted, and reconstituted. It’s as if we are flying in a windowless airplane, guided only by instruments. As ― Anaïs Nin put it: “We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”
 

In that ketamine session, this realization deepened. I remember thinking, How will we know we are dead when it comes? Though not directly relevant here, that question arose from the same symbolic terrain—an existential vertigo tethered to the robot hands.

This was a phenomenological insight: all perception is mediated. We are always already interpreting—assembling fragments of sensation into meaning. The robot hands, then, were not merely prosthetic or pathological. They became a metaphor for embodiment itself: for the fundamental conditions of perception, limitation, and interpretation. They pointed to the nature of being-in-the-world.

We are always operating on instruments. There is no direct experience of unfiltered reality—only mediated touch, sound, sight, smell, taste, and interoception (and perhaps neuroception). These are our thresholds. Our tools.

In this light, my robot hands are symbolic of every hand. All bodies—even the so-called whole or able—are interfaces, not transparent conduits of truth. My bodily suffering and estrangement from flesh are not aberrations; they are radical revelations of the human condition.

When I say recognition is my absence, and connect that to the robot hands as a symbol of limited access, I’m naming a deeper philosophical tension. What does it mean to be recognized, if the recognizer is also flying blind? Is true recognition even possible, when each of us is projecting our own simulation?

This suggests that true recognition does not come from external affirmation, but from resonance between simulations. In that light, the contemplative life is not the opposite of being seen—it is simply another mode of interfacing with reality.

So then: is there, perhaps, no real difference between solitude and recognition? This may be the hinge of my symbolic conflict. If both the monk and the public artist are interfacing through mediation, then perhaps the goal is not to choose between them, but to realize they share a similar instrument panel. The self in solitude is no less real than the self in relation. Both are flying blind—but flying nonetheless.

And so the real question becomes: What instruments do I trust?
 

Statement of Intention

I intend to create work that honors both my inner life and my desire to be seen—not for validation but as a form of recognition through resonance. I no longer seek recognition as proof of existence or worth but as a meeting place between simulations—mine and another’s—each partial, each mediated, each real in its own way.

I have come to understand that all perception is interface. My hands—these robot hands, forged in the fire of inflammation and nerve damage—are no less real for being altered. They are instruments. All hands are. We touch the world through layers of mediation, like monks reading light through stained glass, or pilots navigating by the glow of their dials.

There is no unfiltered reality. Instead, we are left with the qualities we can cultivate in response:

• Attention: Full engagement with what arises—focused, receptive awareness.

• Fidelity: Not to “truth” in the absolute sense, but to our experience and to what feels psychologically or aesthetically true. Fidelity here means integrity.

• Presence: A commitment to being with—whether with sensation, with others, with pain, or with a work of art.

Part of me still believes I must choose the cloistered monk of study and quiet contemplation or the recognized artist in dialogue with the world. But I now see these not as opposites but as parallel gestures—one inward, one outward—each reaching toward the same truth through symbol, solitude, fire, and grace.

My goal is to build a life where contemplative depth and creative offering are not in conflict but interwoven. Where robot hands can still hold sacred tools, even if only in imagination. Where the fire that destroys also clarifies, becoming a light to see by. Where illness does not disqualify expression but purifies it.

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Furthermore

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Your question about the other psychological functions helped me reflect on something I've long felt but never quite named. As an INFJ, I tend to process experience through intuition and feeling, so the symbol of "robot hands" at first came with confusion and grief. My actual hands have endured multiple surgeries and the effects of ulnar nerve damage, so they often feel numb or painful. But during the ketamine session, they took on a different quality that's come to feel as if they carried a kind of intelligence or awareness of their own.

 

I've since come to understand this as a form of embodied knowing—that our bodies don't just serve us but may actually know things. So, as I reflect, the robot hands come to feel like more than a limitation; they felt like a threshold. That reminds me of something John Vervaeke talks about—how the tools and objects we use are part of how we understand ourselves—our Self. They're not separate from us, but part of how we make meaning. In that sense, the robot hands are both a symbol of loss and a strange kind of potential.

I’m especially moved by Vervaeke’s use of the word enwonder—the idea that symbols or tools can reignite a felt sense of meaning in the world. It resonates deeply, especially in light of Max Weber’s observation that modern life has become disenchanted. Weber used the German term "Entzauberung," which literally translates to "de-magification". He described a shift in which the world is no longer seen as animated or meaningful, but reduced to facts and functions—things simply happen without deeper significance. Against that backdrop, the longing for wonder isn’t a retreat into fantasy but a movement toward a richer, more connected form of truth. Through symbol, through story, and perhaps even through pain, I find myself reaching for that kind of reawakening.