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

by David Brooks

The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to let someone down without breaking their heart; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.

On social media, stimulation replaces intimacy. There is judgment everywhere and understanding nowhere.

And all these different skills rest on one foundational skill: the ability to understand what another person is going through. There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them,” George Bernard Shaw wrote, “but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” To do that is to say: You don’t matter. You don’t exist.

Diminishers make people feel small and unseen. They see other people as things to be used, not as persons to be befriended. They stereotype and ignore. They are so involved with themselves that other people are just not on their radar screen. Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know what to look for and how to ask the right questions at the right time. They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, deeper, respected, lit up.

Some therapists try to separate patients from their families. Pipher says that they are quick to see the problems in a family, give it a label—dysfunctional—and then blame the family for whatever is afflicting the patient. And, of course, in many cases, families really are abusive and the victims need to break free. But Pipher, characteristically, looks for the good. “While families are imperfect institutions, they are also our greatest source of meaning, connection, and joy,” she writes. “All families are a little crazy, but that is because all humans are a little crazy.”

DON’T BE A TOPPER. If somebody tells you they are having trouble with their teenage son, don’t turn around and say, “I know exactly what you mean. I’m having incredible problems with my Steven.” You may think you’re trying to build a shared connection, but what you are really doing is shifting attention back to yourself. You’re saying, in effect, “Your problems aren’t that interesting to me; let me tell you about my own, much more fascinating ones.” If you want to build a shared connection, try sitting with their experience before you start ladling out your own.

The Body Keeps the Score is one of the bestselling books of our era. It’s about trauma—and healing from trauma—and has sold millions of copies. As Van der Kolk writes, “Knowing that we are seen and heard by the important people in our lives can make us feel calm and safe, and…being ignored or dismissed can precipitate rage reactions or mental collapse.”

According to research by Ryan Streeter of the American Enterprise Institute, lonely people are seven times more likely than non-lonely people to say they are active in politics. For people who feel disrespected and unseen, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. Politics seems to offer a comprehensible moral landscape. We, the children of light, are facing off against them, the children of darkness. Politics seems to offer a sense of belonging. I am on the barricades with the other members of my tribe. Politics seems to offer an arena of moral action. To be moral in this world, you don’t have to feed the hungry or sit with the widow. You just have to be liberal or conservative, you just have to feel properly enraged at the people you find contemptible.

As schools became more fixated on career success, they stopped worrying about churning out students who would be considerate to others.

Here are a few of the defenses that many people carry inside, sometimes for the rest of their lives: AVOIDANCE. Avoidance is usually about fear. Emotions and relationships have hurt me, so I will minimize emotions and relationships.

We all know people who are smart. But that doesn’t mean they are wise. Understanding and wisdom come from surviving the pitfalls of life, thriving in life, having wide and deep contact with other people. Out of your own moments of suffering, struggle, friendship, intimacy, and joy comes a compassionate awareness of how other people feel—their frailty, their confusion, and their courage. The wise are those who have lived full, varied lives, and reflected deeply on what they’ve been through.