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

Book by David Brooks · 4 quotes · Understanding, Empathy, Relationships

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

“Some days it seems like we have intentionally built a society that gives people little guidance on how to perform the most important activities of life. As a result, a lot of us are lonely and lack deep friendships. It’s not because we don’t want these things. Above almost every other need, human beings long to have another person look into their face with loving respect and acceptance. It’s that we lack practical knowledge about how to give each other the kind of rich attention we desire. I’m not sure Western societies were ever great at teaching these skills, but over the past several decades, in particular, there’s been a loss of moral knowledge. Our schools and other institutions have focused more and more on preparing people for their careers, but not on the skills of being considerate toward the person next to you. The humanities, which teach us what goes on in the minds of other people, have become marginalized. And a life spent on social media is not exactly helping people learn these skills. On social media you can have the illusion of social contact without having to perform the gestures that actually build trust, care, and affection. On social media, stimulation replaces intimacy. There is judgment everywhere and understanding nowhere.”

UnderstandingRelationshipsFriendshipAttentionCompassionEmpathySocial MediaIntimacyConsiderationFriendships
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“In this age of creeping dehumanization, I’ve become obsessed with social skills: how to get better at treating people with consideration; how to get better at understanding the people right around us. 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.”

UnderstandingRelationshipsCompassionEmpathyConsiderationSocial Skills
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“Our social skills are currently inadequate to the pluralistic societies we are living in. In my job as a journalist, I often find myself interviewing people who tell me they feel invisible and disrespected: Black people feeling that the systemic inequities that affect their daily experiences are not understood by whites, rural people feeling they are not seen by coastal elites, people across political divides staring at each other with angry incomprehension, depressed young people feeling misunderstood by their parents and everyone else, privileged people blithely unaware of all the people around them cleaning their houses and serving their needs, husbands and wives in broken marriages who realize that the person who should know them best actually has no clue. Many of our big national problems arise from the fraying of our social fabric. If we want to begin repairing the big national ruptures, we have to learn to do the small things well.”

RelationshipsCompassionEmpathyPrivilegePluralismSocial SkillsMarginalizationFeeling Invisible
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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