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

by David Brooks

Nothing can be heard in the mind until the situation feels safe and familiar to the body.

we may be at the same event together, but we’re each having our own experience of it. Or, as the writer Anaïs Nin put it, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished.”

Wisdom is a social skill practiced within a relationship or a system of relationships. Wisdom is practiced when people come together to form what Parker Palmer called a “community of truth.”

An Illuminator is a blessing to those around him. When he meets others he has a compassionate awareness of human frailty, because he knows the ways we are all frail. He is gracious toward human folly because he’s aware of all the ways we are foolish. He accepts the unavoidability of conflict and greets disagreement with curiosity and respect.