How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

by David Brooks

When you’re beholding someone, you’re seeing the richness of this particular human consciousness,

Mary Pipher once told me. “To be able to understand people and be present for them in their experience—that’s the most important thing in the world.”

I want to see people deeply, one by one.

The tendency to do the instant size-up is just one of the Diminisher tricks.

EGOTISM.

are too self-centered to try.

ANXIETY.

NAÏVE REALISM.

People in the grip of naïve realism are so locked into their own perspective, they can’t appreciate that other people have very different perspectives.

THE LESSER-MINDS PROBLEM.

This leads to the perception that I am much more complicated than you—deeper,

OBJECTIVISM.

terrible way to see an individual person.

attachments—the cast of this unique person’s inner world.

If you want to understand humanity, you have to focus on the thoughts and emotions of individuals,

not just data about groups.

ESSENTIALISM.

Essentialists are quick to use stereotypes to categorize vast swaths of people.

Essentialism is the belief that certain groups actually have an “essential” and immutable nature.

THE STATIC MINDSET.

You changed profoundly. And those people never updated their models to see you now for who you really are.

that seeing another person well is the hardest of all hard problems.

Fierce Attachments is a brilliant description of seeing but not really seeing. Here are two smart, dynamic, highly verbal women in lifelong communication who are never quite able to understand each other.

Gornick’s book is so good because it illustrates that even in cases where we’re devoted to a person, and know a lot about them, it’s still possible to not see them. You can be loved by a person yet not be known by them.

Being an Illuminator, seeing other people in all their fullness, doesn’t just happen. It’s a craft, a set of skills, a way of life. Other cultures have words for this way of being.

nunchi,

herzensbildung,

Weavers, the kind of community builders who knit towns and neighborhoods together, who drive civic life.

LaRue Dorsey.

seducers.

transactionalists.

Others are simply delightful, magnetic personalities.

he’s just so damn likable that people will divulge anything simply to keep him hanging around.)

My mode, I suppose, is that o...

table smiling as broadly as it is possible for a human face to smile.

delighted nine-year-old girl appeared. By projecting a different quality of attention, Jimmy called forth a different version of her. Jimmy is an Illuminator.

Each of us has a characteristic way of showing up in the world, a physical and mental presence that sets a tone for how people interact with us.

That gaze, that first sight, represents a posture toward the world.

When Jimmy sees a person—any

person—he is seeing a creature who was made in the image of God. As he looks into each face, he is looking, at least a bit, into the face of God. When Jimmy sees a person, any person, he is also seeing a creature endowed with an immortal soul—a soul of infinite value and dignity.

You may find the whole idea of God ridiculous, but I ask you to believe in the concept of a soul.

You may just be chatting with someone about the weather, but I ask you to assume that the person in front of you contains some piece of themselves that has no weight, size, color, or shape yet gives them infinite value and dignity.

If you consider that each person has a soul, you will be aware that each person has some tran...

You will be aware that at the deepest level we are all equals. We’re not equal in might, intelligence, or wealth, but we are all equal on the level of our souls. If you see the people you meet as preci...

When you’re practicing Illuminationism,

are conveyed in your gaze before they are conveyed by your words.

features of the Illuminator’s gaze:

TENDERNESS.

Mister Rogers

Ted Lasso