At the Interface of
Authentic Encounters

The digital art exhibition "At the Interface of Authentic Encounters" consists of two parts. Its physical part is on display in the city library in Finland, and the already created interactive community art part is here. By clicking on the pictures, you get to read the stories that inspired them.

I welcome all visitors to participate in the process of creating art by sharing their stories on the Community art tab. The community art project thus expands beyond the physical exhibition. It's dynamic: the more new stories you let me listen to, the more new art and stories I'll add to this tab at regular intervals.

“My spouse and I divorced three years ago. Our marriage was not the best, we barely communicated and after the divorce, I realized that I couldn’t remember a single compliment that I would have received during the marriage. But at least my ex wanted me, we wouldn’t have gotten married otherwise, right? I was lonely in my marriage, but I don’t know if this loneliness is any better. I still feel invisible. After the divorce, I got into an accident that left my left leg shorter than the right. That has not increased my success in the dating market. I have had three people ask me on a date after I joined a dating app, and I went out with them a couple of times, but those ended up with two of them ghosting me and I was not interested in the third person. I don’t know how to tell about my life in an engaging, fun way. All conversations I have with possible dates on a dating app die as soon as I tell a bit more of myself. I think that I am just too ordinary, too boring. I have become a shadow of my former self.” Wilma, 32

Our need to belong is coded into our being. We need to have people who listen to us and whose existence creates a sense of “us” when we think about them. We may have a clear sense of identity that we have constructed on our own, but if this does not get reinforced by our reference groups, we often start doubting it. Maybe we are not really as funny as we think we are, if no one ever bothers to listen to our jokes and laugh at them, or maybe our understanding of the excellence of our professional skills is flawed if we never get any acknowledgement from our coworkers and employers. We need connections that reinforce the positive attributes that we imagine ourselves to have as individuals, spouses, employees, and friends.

Our need to belong is so strong that at times, people make unhealthy decisions in order to maintain or gain the acceptance of others. We may stay in a relationship that threatens our mental or physical safety, because at the same time, it offers us a unit to belong to, or join groups that do not function on their members’ best interest in mind. No matter how intelligent we are, we may allow people to mislead us, blindsight us, and even financially or otherwise use us just so that we would have a person or a group in our lives that shows us (false) acceptance, love, and positive reinforcement. They are able to do that because they listen to us. Their motives may not be acceptable, but they hear us, reach out to us, and make us feel that they care. Their listening confirms the shape of our being. We need it, because without it, we may not even know who we are.

“I am 52 years old and for the first time in my life, I am in a serious relationship. It sounds weird, I know. For the first time I have someone who takes time to listen to me. When I was younger, I tried to find a man who I would have been able to connect with, but I never found him. I used a lot of drugs until I turned 30, and I used my body to pay for what I used, so the connections I made back then were based on a very poorly made cost-benefit analysis. Then against all odds, I got clean. And I realized that outside of my family, I had no one who would’ve listened to sober me. I tried to hang out with my former friends and talk to them, but they couldn’t care less about my new life. I didn’t know how to talk with people who were not drug users. I had a hard time not feeling inferior when it came to people who had finished school, had nice careers, and families. I had nothing. I lived with my parents and worked in a job that my mother got for me. On top of that, I stayed away from relationships because I did not know how to come out of the closet. What would people say if they knew I liked women instead of men? A lesbian ex-druggie. My parents would have been devastated! Even after they passed away, I was struggling with being openly who I am. Then a couple of years ago I started talking online with this woman who was living out of country. She seemed interested in me, we took things slowly, she was consistent in her communication, and she connected with me. She asked me more questions than anyone had ever asked and encouraged me to tell my story. For the first time I wasn’t the only one listening, but it was mutual. After a few months of talking, I asked her how come she still cared to listen to my stories, and she told me for the first time that it was because she loved me. She is my rock, and I know she’ll be there even when things get tough. My stories, also the ones that are yet to be told, matter to her.” Renee, 52

Listeners hold emotional power over the speaker. Their reactions and feedback can empower us or make us feel like we should have done something better. Sometimes our listeners seem absent-minded, which leads to them not being mindfully present in the interaction situation. Everybody knows how frustrating it can be, especially if you are trying to explain something important.

The more personal significance the topic has, the more we expect to receive appropriate listener feedback. We want our listeners, especially close friends and loved ones, to be emotionally present when we talk. Yet they may drift away and start thinking about something completely else and have no clue what we just said when we expect to see a reaction or receive some feedback. This can draw a negative emotional response from us and lead to disagreements. Our peace of mind and well-being requires that we know that our stories are considered important enough to be listened to, because that gives us the assurance that we are important and loved.

“No one would ever believe me if I told them that I am lonely. I am successful at work, I stay in shape, and I am seeing someone. Once a month, I get together with my family for a weekend, it’s a family tradition, because we are all so busy that otherwise we probably wouldn’t see each other much. I am surrounded by people most of the day, but apart from my employer to whom I am valuable because I close deals others can only dream of, those people could not care less if I am there or not. Any social activity feels pointless because it never leads to anything. I see how others find a connection with each other around me, but it's like it happens on a level that is out of my reach, and I have no idea what to do about it. I treat others nicely, I ask questions about their life, and I try to be approachable. Yet, I am lonely. Not alone, but lonely. I don’t know how to change the way things are.” Tom, 42

For some of us, loneliness is a permanent part of our life. No one listens to us or asks how we are doing, how our day went, or if we want to come and do something fun during the weekend. Feeling lonely may make us feel insignificant to others and helpless as we would connect with people if we could find the people with whom creating connections feels natural and rewarding. Loneliness strips away our right to feel empowered by positive social experiences.

It is hard to know who is feeling lonely, as some people have a lot of acquaintances or even friends, yet they are not able to relate to them and create meaningful connections with them. Some people are happy being alone. Our society acknowledges the loneliness of youth and elderly and at times even tries to reduce it, but it rarely addresses the loneliness of men. One in three men state that they are lonely and have no one to turn to if they need help. They are taught to be tough and independent from an early age, and this mindset may prevent them from seeking connections. Real intimacy requires listening, and listening requires openness, trust, and transparency. All of these can be considered weak and unmasculine. So, lonely men hide and feel even more lonely. How can our society help our men to feel less lonely if the only emotion that it allows men to express is anger?

“The last three years have been really hard. In the beginning of the pandemic, I lost my parents and a close friend, and I feel like something in me does not let me get fully over the losses. The process is really slow. I have spent countless hours with my spouse crying. First my tears were triggered by practically anything, even the smallest memory of those amazing people can do it, now I can handle a little more. The best advice I have gotten so far has been from my spouse. He suggested that whenever it rains, I should sit by the window, listen to the rain, and let it wash away my pain. Doing so, just sitting and letting my tears run with the rain, makes me feel grounded. At some point I notice that I don’t’ cry anymore.” Trisha, 28

Listening to rain has the power to heal. It offers us a respite from the fast pace of our lives, stops us from worrying about the future, and for a moment, allows us to mindfully live in the present. The steady sound of rain, white noise, covers a lot of sounds that otherwise surround us all the time, and encourages us to take a moment in which we only focus on listening to rain.

Rain can also make us feel less alone with our pain, especially if we have lost a loved one. Rain does not bring back the person, but there is something comforting in knowing that even nature mourns with us and cries with us. If we have no one we could talk about our loss with, it may feel that rain brings us solace and understands our pain.

“If you asked someone about me, they’d say that I am really good at my job, a social butterfly and that my husband and I have this wonderful, picture-perfect marriage. Hearing those things should be a good thing but I feel like I’m at a breaking point because of those things. I feel like an imposter. If we take work as an example, my boss assumes that I am quick on my feet and an efficient worker, he gives me extra tasks on top of my normal workload.

The problem is that I am not quick on my feet at all. He doesn’t see that it takes me a lot of time just to make all the details fit in the big picture, but when I finally get that done, then I get the work done fast. When I am given side projects, I don’t have time to think, and then I get behind in my actual work or don’t perform as well as I would if I had the time.

When it comes to me being really social, people always are inviting me to arrange all kinds of things with them, even though I actually am quite introverted and hate large social gatherings. I would much rather stay at home and watch TV. When I have said that to them, they tell me that I am so good at arranging these types of get-togethers that they simply cannot survive without me. This of course I don’t believe as they survived just fine before my husband, and I moved to this area. But I feel like if I say no, I can kiss goodbye any chance of having a social circle. What happened to the golden mean?

However, the worst is that they assume my husband is madly in love with me and that I am madly in love with him. Truth be told, we are actually considering separation, and I hate that. I still see the same person I fell in love with all those years ago, but he does not feel the same. When my friends have opened up about their marital problems, they always refer to my “dream marriage” and truthfully it makes me just want to cry. I am not seen as who I am, I am seen as who they assume that I am, and their perception of me makes me feel invisible and alone.” Marie, 38

Our brains are wired to make assumptions. When we listen to someone’s verbal and nonverbal behavior, we create an assumption that makes sense with information that we receive through listening. The assumption is created through the lenses of understanding that our prior experiences have developed. This assumption shortcut saves time and effort and offers efficiency that our brains constantly seek for.

The negative side of assumptions is that most of the time, they serve as emotional outlets for negative yet often unrecognized feelings. We assume because we fear something, because we want to test boundaries that others have set, and because controlling others can make us feel temporarily better. Because assumptions serve selfish purposes, they damage our capacity to relate to others. They can be disguised as compliments, or expressed as concerns, or be blatantly rude. There is a fine line between giving someone a real compliment and praising them into submission. When we focus on listening to others with the intention of actually wanting to hear what they say instead of allowing our own motives to guide our listening, assumptions can be superseded by a genuine connection.

“One of my coworkers is one of the most challenging listeners I have ever met. When we talk one-on-one, she seems to pay attention and responds appropriately to my comments. In a group setting, she stops listening to me. We may stand next to each other, and if I ask a question from her, she may pretend she didn’t hear me. She is kind of an opinion leader in our work team, so after she had done that a few times, I noticed that others were doing it in too. It has become quite absurd: in meetings, when it is my turn to report the progress of my project, she or someone else starts talking over me mid-sentence. Nowadays I report my part in one or two sentences, because there is no point in saying more. Later, people stop by at my office and ask me about the project. I don’t know how I should behave around them anymore. Should I be my normal nice self and offer them more information, or should I be more distant? Should I not explain anything when they ask? I am so confused by all this. I have become a lot more reserved, because I don’t think my work community really listens to me.” Lisa, 36

We show different sides of our identity depending on where and with whom we interact, and we get feedback from those different sides of ours. However, if we do not have many social contacts or receive inconsistent feedback, it may become unclear what our social identity looks like. We may not be confident about what we should talk about with others, we may become uncertain what side of ourselves we should show more when with others, and we may feel like we need to hide who we really are.

Listener feedback is, thus, an essential part of our identity construction. We need to know how others see us, understand why they see us the way they do, and then based on that information make an educated decision regarding if we prefer to be seen that way or in some other way. Listener feedback has been indicated to have an immense impact on our self-image: The closer relationship we have with the listener, the more we tend to remember the negative comments that they have made of us. We get a lot more listener feedback of our social identity than our personal identity, but as fitting in has been crucial for our survival for thousands of years, we seem to prefer to maintain a more positive conception of our social self and blame our personal self of the negative feedback. The more considerate yet honest listeners are regarding the feedback they give, the easier we can let go of the unnecessary negative conceptions of our self-image and form a realistic balance between our personal and social identity.

“When I was about 12 years old, my mom often told me to go talk with my grandma, because she wanted me to always remember where my family came from. At that time, my grandma was already almost 80 years old and terminally ill, so we knew she wouldn’t be with us for long. “Ask about Karelia” my mom said. My grandma was one of the 410,000 evacuees that Finland relocated in WW2 to other parts of the country after Karelia had to be ceded to Soviet Union as a result of Moscow Peace Treaty. So, my grandma told me stories about their life before it all happened, about the relatives who died in the war, about the 24-hour notice before the evacuation and frantic packing, the worry about the newborn who was wrapped in a blanket and tucked inside her coat surviving in the freezing temperatures in the back of the truck, and how no one was left behind even though the number of evacuees was 12% of Finland’s population at the time. She taught me that even if everything is taken away from you, it is possible to survive and create a life elsewhere. Not without emotional scars, but eventually without being stuck in the past. Listening to her stories made me realize that we cannot always control what happens to us but we can try to survive and eventually try to make the best of what we have.” Sanna, 46

Listening to our parents or grandparents tell their stories can be anything from fascinating to boring. Some stories are told only once, others again and again. Do we ever stop to wonder what makes them so significant to the storyteller that they are worth telling again and again? Are they stories of love and happiness or stories that the tellers wish they did not live to tell? Generational stories tell us about so much more than they seem at first. We learn, relate, and, perhaps, learn to know ourselves a little more when we listen to them.

How many of us wish that we would have listened to our parents, grandparents, older friends, or neighbors more? Many times, there would have been opportunities to do so, but we were too busy, too entangled in the drama of our own lives, or too certain that we know things better than they do. And then, they’re gone. Their perspective on things, their life experience, and their love is no longer available for us to inquire about. We cannot ask for advice anymore, or learn about life in the past, or get to know our family history. Not listening to them when we have a chance is something we regret, because it makes our loss so much larger.
However, sometimes we have a good reason not to listen to generational stories. They may be told with an intention to make us hurt, feel guilty, or be ashamed, or they may be told with good intentions but the stories themselves may be so painful to hear that listening to them feels overburdening. Sometimes not listening is an inevitable choice that we must make to heal. As listening to the teachings of our ancestors has always been one of the ways how we connect with others, having to refuse from listening can leave us feeling like we are missing out on something, because it means that we are forced to choose not to belong.