How to Know a Person

A friend referred me to a new book by David Brooks, titled How to Know a Person.

As David Brooks observes, “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 following is taken from a preview of the book:

Human beings need recognition as much as they need food and water. No crueler punishment can be devised than to not see someone, to render them unimportant or invisible. “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.

On the other hand, there are few things as fulfilling as that sense of being seen and understood. I often ask people to tell me about times they’ve felt seen, and with glowing eyes they tell me stories about pivotal moments in their life. They talk about a time when someone perceived some talent in them that they themselves weren’t even able to see. They talk about a time when somebody understood exactly what they needed at some exhausted moment-and stepped in, in just the right way, to lighten the load.

Our practice of recalling a benefactor or a caring moment is precisely recognizing the compassionate relationship of seeing and being seen by another being. The sense of “seeing” another or “being seen” is a reminder that our true nature of peace, kindness, and compassion is always present – and visible to others (even if not to ourselves) in any moment. This sense of peace resonates in our heart and draws us out of habitual, confining patterns of the past and into the openness and spaciousness of our true nature in the present moment.