There’s a need I can identify as a need to be watched over. It might be similar to being looked after but it is significantly different. The difference between being a child and being an adult. And, of course, there are all the spaces in between those two states.
Some of the time I can’t see what I’m doing. It’s like writing, I’m writing and I can’t quite see what it is I’m getting at or I know what I’m getting at (at least I believe that I do) but later discover, either when somebody points it out to me or I see it for myself, what else I was saying through a piece of writing.
To some degree I have to be able to watch over myself bu nobody is to be trusted absolutely; we are all flawed, partial sorts of creatures. We need watching.
Of course, I might well resent this surveillance. I might well hope that this surveillance has my best interests at heart and won’t be used to persecute me.
Like being looked after, being watched over is a species of being loved. But with more space. More freedom.
And some of the time I’ll be looking in the wrong direction.