BLOG 148
May 12, 2025
THE ART OF SEEING
“I’ve come to believe that the quality of our lives and the health of our society depends, to a large degree, on how well we treat each other in the minute interactions of daily life. 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. That is at the heart of being a good person, the ultimate gift you can give to others and to yourself.”
(David Brooks: How to Know a Person, Random House, 2023)
Walking through our parkade not long ago, I automatically waved to the driver of a passing car, though I couldn’t see who was driving behind the tinted windows. Figuring that anyone using the same parking level was at least a passing acquaintance or possible neighbor, my immediate reaction was to wave in the polite but distant way that we pass fellow condo dwellers for years with no real recognition or acknowledgment.
I began to think of that passing car as a metaphor for the facades each of us present to the world, seldom allowing anyone to see behind our “tinted windows” to the cares and concerns, thoughts and feelings that are driving our observable behavior. This thought compelled me to delve into Brooks’s book (that I had been given a couple of years ago but hadn’t opened, thinking I am sufficiently adept at getting to know people). According to Brooks, that just ain’t so:
“I probably don’t know you personally, but I can make the following statement with a high degree of confidence: You’re not as good as you think you are. We all go through our days awash in social ignorance”… and… “How often in your life have you felt stereotyped and categorized? How often have you felt pre-judged, invisible, misheard or misunderstood? Do you really think you don’t do this to others on a daily basis?”
Busted!
This insight came as I was beginning to acknowledge a need for a greater sense of belonging and community now that I’m back in the city. My husband’s and my peripatetic lifestyle sees us being away for months at a time from the new-to-us neighborhood of West Vancouver. Often, when I return — as we did in late April — I experience a kind of disorientation that seems to have increased with age, and which can trigger the sort of existential crisis that I mentioned in an earlier blog. I have to work harder to reconnect with old friends, and/or make new ones, to create a sense of structure and purpose that set the camber of my waking life. Hence Brooks’s words came at an opportune time:
“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”.
I find it reassuring that Brooks’s book came to my attention when it did. It reminds me of the adage: “Seek and you will find; ask and you will receive; knock and the door will be opened for you.” It was encouraging to learn I’m not the only one to register a need to see and be seen, or who perceives a certain urgency to counteract what Brooks calls “this age of creeping dehumanization”.
Now to leave the relative isolation of blogging and head outside for my afternoon tea break. Repopulating the neighborhood, one chai at a time.