How to Know a Person

In a small diner in Waco, Texas, a ninety-three-year-old woman named LaRue Dorsey sits across from a journalist, presenting herself as a stern disciplinarian who demanded excellence from her students. The conversation feels formal, distant. Then a friend bursts through the door, rushes to her table, and exclaims with unbridled joy, "Mrs. Dorsey! You're the best! I love you!" In that instant, the stern mask melts away, revealing the delighted face of a young girl. One person's genuine attention has called forth an entirely different version of this remarkable woman.

This moment captures something profound about human nature: we all possess multiple versions of ourselves, waiting to be recognized and brought to life by the quality of attention we receive from others. Yet in our increasingly disconnected world, millions of people report feeling invisible, misunderstood, or reduced to shallow categories. The ability to truly see another person, to make them feel valued and understood, has become both rare and desperately needed. This exploration reveals how mastering this fundamental human skill can transform our relationships, communities, and the very fabric of society itself.

A middle-aged man sits alone at a baseball game, clutching the handle of a shattered bat that has just landed at his feet. Getting a whole bat at a game is incredibly rare, far better than catching a foul ball. He should be jumping up and down, celebrating, becoming the temporary hero of the crowd. Instead, he sits motionless, stone-faced, as everyone stares at him in bewilderment. This man has spent decades as an emotional escape artist, skilled at making meaningful eye contact with his shoes whenever someone tries to connect with him.

Years later, this same person finds himself on a theater panel where the rules are different. Here, people hug before performing, share tissues during emotional moments, and celebrate each other's vulnerability. For the first time, he experiences what it feels like to be truly present with others, to give and receive authentic attention. The contrast is startling, a revelation that transforms his understanding of what it means to be human.

The journey from emotional numbness to authentic connection reveals a fundamental truth: being seen is as essential to human survival as food and water. When we render someone invisible or unimportant, we commit what may be the worst sin against our fellow humans. Conversely, when we offer someone the gift of genuine recognition, we provide something that enables them to flourish in ways they never imagined possible.

Research confirms what our hearts already know: people who feel recognized and valued by their managers stay in their jobs, while those who feel unseen leave regardless of pay. Students thrive under teachers who truly see their potential, while others wither under indifferent gazes. The quality of attention we offer others literally shapes who they become, calling forth either their highest or most diminished selves.

This power to illuminate or diminish others through our attention represents one of the most profound responsibilities we carry as human beings. In every interaction, we choose whether to be Diminishers who make people feel small and unseen, or Illuminators who help others feel bigger, deeper, and more valued than before.

In the midst of a routine interview about urban planning, a journalist asks simple questions about a person's life story. The conversation starts with basic facts, but as trust builds, deeper truths emerge. A ninety-four-year-old woman begins sharing her experiences of surviving pogroms, revolution, Stalin's purges, and Nazi occupation. Each trauma that had been inflicted on the Russian people had somehow touched her life. The journalist simply keeps asking, "And then what happened?" allowing her story to unfold at its own pace.

This encounter demonstrates the transformative power of patient, curious listening. Most of us go through life awash in social ignorance, accurately reading what others think and feel only about twenty percent of the time with strangers, and barely better with those closest to us. We mistake our assumptions for understanding, our projections for perception.

True conversation requires abandoning the role of lecturer or entertainer to become something more valuable: a skilled guide for mutual exploration. The best conversationalists don't dazzle with brilliant monologues but create space where both people can discover something new together. They treat attention as an on-off switch rather than a dimmer, offering their complete presence rather than divided focus.

The art lies in asking questions that invite stories rather than mere opinions. Instead of "What do you think about this?" we might ask, "How did you come to believe that?" This subtle shift opens doorways to understanding the experiences that shaped another person's worldview. When we learn to be loud listeners, offering encouragement and genuine curiosity, we discover that most people are far more willing to share their authentic selves than we ever imagined.

The reward for developing these skills extends far beyond better relationships. When we become skilled at seeing others clearly, we paradoxically come to understand ourselves more deeply, recognizing patterns and possibilities that were previously invisible to our own self-focused gaze.

A French writer and his girlfriend watch in horror as a tsunami devastates their Sri Lankan resort, separating them from a family they had befriended. The parents, Jérôme and Delphine, return from town to learn their four-year-old daughter Juliette has been swept away. In the aftermath, these strangers become bound together by shared grief and the desperate human need for connection in the face of unimaginable loss.

Over the following days, as they search hospitals and comfort other survivors, something profound occurs. The writer, previously self-absorbed and emotionally distant, finds himself entering deeply into the experiences of others. He watches Jérôme's heroic efforts to hold his wife together, witnesses Delphine's silent courage as her world collapses, and discovers reserves of compassion he never knew he possessed. Through seeing others in their darkest moments, he is transformed.

Crisis has a unique power to strip away pretense and reveal our essential humanity. When we encounter others in their struggles, whether through depression, loss, conflict, or trauma, we face a choice: we can retreat into our own comfort zones, or we can learn to practice what the deepest wisdom traditions call "getting down on the floor" with those who have fallen.

This requires developing new skills for hard conversations. We must learn to step into another person's perspective, to understand that someone sitting on top of a situation sees it very differently from someone being sat upon. We need to create space for others to be heard completely before rushing to solve or dismiss their concerns. Most importantly, we must resist the temptation to make their experience about us or our own similar struggles.

The paradox of suffering is that those who have endured their own difficulties with grace often become the most skilled at accompanying others through theirs. They understand that healing happens not through advice-giving but through the patient presence of someone willing to witness another's pain without trying to fix, minimize, or escape it.

A man named John arrives for therapy sessions treating everyone around him as incompetent, including his therapist. He pulls out his phone during sessions, orders lunch to multitask, and refers to his therapist as his "hooker" since he pays for her time. His life is crumbling, his marriage failing, his children acting out, yet he maintains his superior stance toward everyone he encounters.

Rather than diagnosing John as simply narcissistic, his therapist chooses to see beyond his defensive behaviors to the wounded person underneath. She maintains what she calls "idiot compassion," showing unconditional positive regard while gently challenging his self-deceptions. Week after week, she creates a safe space where John can gradually let down his guard.

Eventually, the truth emerges: John's mother died heroically when he was six, and years later, his own six-year-old son died in a car accident while John was driving distracted. The cruel, dismissive behavior that drove everyone away was actually armor protecting him from unbearable guilt and grief. Once John feels truly seen and accepted in his pain, he begins the slow work of reconnecting with his surviving family members.

This transformation illustrates the profound difference between trying to change someone and truly understanding them. The wisest companions in life don't offer quick fixes or brilliant insights. Instead, they practice what we might call accompaniment: the art of walking alongside another person as they navigate their own journey of discovery and healing.

Like a river guide who knows the currents but lets the water find its own course, skilled companions create conditions for growth without forcing outcomes. They ask questions that help people hear themselves more clearly, offer perspectives that expand rather than constrain options, and provide the steady presence that allows others to risk vulnerability and change.

The deepest gift we can offer another human being is not our solutions but our attention, not our answers but our willingness to help them discover their own wisdom. In a world obsessed with expertise and efficiency, this patient art of accompaniment becomes a radical act of love.

A young Black woman grows up in an all-Black town in early twentieth-century Florida, listening to the stories and folk wisdom shared on the porch of the local store. Years later, as a celebrated writer during the Harlem Renaissance, she returns to collect these same stories, now understanding them as treasures of cultural wisdom that shaped her deepest sense of self.

Zora Neale Hurston's journey reveals how each of us exists in a state of "givenness," inheriting gifts from ancestors we may never have met but who live on in our gestures, values, and ways of seeing the world. Yet we are not passive vessels for cultural transmission. We actively choose which traditions to embrace, which to modify, and which to reject, becoming co-creators of the cultures we pass forward.

Understanding another person requires seeing them through this double vision: as unique individuals crafting their own life stories, and as inheritors of cultural legacies that run deeper than conscious memory. The challenge is to appreciate how someone's ancestral experiences continue to shape their present reality without reducing them to stereotypes or categories.

This becomes particularly crucial in our diverse society, where people from different cultural backgrounds must learn to see across difference. Too often, we either ignore cultural context entirely or let it become the only thing we see about a person. True understanding requires holding both perspectives simultaneously, recognizing how cultural inheritance shapes perception while remaining open to the surprising ways each individual transcends or transforms their given circumstances.

The stories we tell about our lives are always collaborative creations, woven from the threads of personal experience and cultural memory. When we learn to ask people about their roots, their migrations, their family stories and cultural practices, we gain access to the deeper currents that shape their choices and dreams. In understanding where someone comes from, we better understand who they are becoming.

The journey toward seeing others deeply begins with a simple recognition: every person we encounter is engaged in the heroic work of creating meaning from the raw materials of experience. They are constructing their reality moment by moment, shaped by personality traits, life circumstances, cultural inheritance, and the stories they tell themselves about who they are and who they might become.

Mastering the art of human connection requires developing specific skills: offering illuminating attention rather than diminishing judgment, learning to accompany others through their struggles without trying to fix them, asking questions that invite stories rather than demand answers, and creating spaces where people feel safe enough to reveal their authentic selves. These abilities transform us from casual observers of human life into active participants in each other's growth and healing. When we see someone clearly and help them feel truly known, we participate in the sacred work of calling forth their best and truest self.

The stakes of this learning could not be higher. In a world increasingly marked by loneliness, division, and misunderstanding, those who master these arts of connection become healers of the social fabric itself. They create pockets of recognition and belonging that remind us what it means to be fully human. By learning to see others with wisdom and compassion, we not only enrich our own lives but contribute to the great work of building a world where everyone can flourish in the warmth of genuine human understanding.