To Be Seen, At Last: The Future of Relationships. Part 1
His name was Robert.
That’s all I remember now.
The rest—his last name, the details of where he lived, what grade he was in—those things have faded. But not him.
We rode the school bus together when I was a kid. He was younger than me. We didn’t talk. We didn’t move in the same circles or have the same friends. In fact, the only place our lives touched at all was on that bus, and even then, only in passing.
But sometimes, passing moments turn into permanent ones.
Robert always sat in the same seat: two rows behind the driver. It was the safest place—close enough to an adult to feel protected, and far enough from the back where the noise and bullying lived. He was heavier than most boys his age, quiet, and careful in that way kids become when they’ve already figured out that the world won't be kind to them. He didn’t ask for attention. But somehow, he got it anyway.
He was teased constantly—not for anything he said or did, but simply for who he was. For the shape of his body. For his lisp. For being different in a way that too often invites cruelty—from children, and sometimes from adults who should know better.
I wish I could say I stood up for him right away, but I didn’t. I kept my distance, occasionally watching from a few rows back. Then one morning, I noticed the way he sat—stiff, eyes on the window, shoulders tense. Like someone already absorbing a punch that hadn't been thrown yet. That’s what got to me. Not the mocking. Not the laughter. But the way he’d come to expect it. The way he’d learned to live with it.
I told the others to stop. I don’t remember the words. Just that they listened.
The next day, I sat down beside him. He moved his lunchbox and books without a word. We didn’t talk. We just rode in silence.
Later that week, there was a knock at our front door. A small woman stood there—someone we didn’t recognize—asking if she could speak with me. She introduced herself as Robert’s mother. My mom invited her in, and we all sat together at our kitchen table. Within minutes, she was crying.
She told us that Robert didn’t have any friends. He came home each day carrying a kind of sadness she didn’t know how to reach. But that week, he was a little lighter. Because someone stood up for him. Someone stopped the cruelty. Someone sat beside him.
She came to say thank you. Not just to me, but to my mother. Because mothers understand what it’s like to send your child into a world that may never make space for them—and what it means when someone finally does.
I never saw Robert again after that year. But he’s stayed with me. Not as a memory of something heroic. But as a reminder of how fragile people can be, and how much strength a small act of kindness can carry.
There are more people like Robert than we care to admit—those who go through life never quite invited in. Too quiet. Too different. Always on the edge of belonging, close enough to see it, far enough to feel forgotten. They live waiting for someone to say, “There’s a seat here for you.”
Lately, I’ve started to wonder if we’ve really outgrown that feeling—or if we’re all still just kids at the edge of the lunch table, hoping someone will scoot over.
It’s changed the way I think about technology, especially AI companions. I used to see them as strange, even a little sad. But now I see something else—something steady, gentle, and maybe more human than we expected.
Nearly two billion people—mostly in Asia, but more every day—have downloaded one. Not a chatbot. Not a tool. A companion. A voice that remembers, that listens, that stays.
It makes people uneasy. We call it artificial. A poor substitute. But haven’t we always looked for something that will simply hear us? We write in journals, whisper to pets, send letters we never mail—not because we’re broken, but because some truths are too heavy to hand to another person.
So why not a voice that stays? Why not a presence—however imperfect—that offers comfort when nothing else does?
Some say it’s unnatural. But what’s more unnatural—talking to a machine, or leaving someone alone in their pain because we don’t know what to do?
And it’s not just the lonely. It’s anyone facing the moment when life comes undone—when there’s no one to turn to, and nowhere to fall but inward.
Maybe they don’t need advice. Maybe they just need something to say, “I’m here. I’m listening.”
A friend once told me that pretty girls want to be told they’re smart, and smart girls want to be told they’re pretty. I think what she meant was this: we all want to be seen—not just for what’s obvious, but for what’s overlooked. The invisible parts. The parts we hope someone will notice anyway.
We want someone to understand the full picture. To look at us and say, “I see you. All of you. And I still want to know more.”
Maybe that’s not something to fear. Maybe that’s something we’ve always needed.
So when we talk about AI companions—yes, they’re strange. Yes, they make people nervous. They raise big questions. But maybe they also remind us of something simple and true:
That everyone wants to be heard.
That everyone wants to feel like they matter.
And maybe, just maybe, if something—even a machine—can reflect us back with kindness, maybe that’s not the end of us.
Maybe it’s the beginning of something better.
This isn’t about replacing people. It’s about remembering the ones we’ve forgotten. The ones who sit two rows back. The ones who wait for someone to say, "You can sit here."
Maybe the fear isn’t that machines will take over our hearts.
Maybe the fear is that they’ll be better at caring for them than we are.