Who Do You Really Know?
Window display in Milan, Italy
It is a truth universally acknowledged that people tend to associate with those perceived as most like themselves. Even then, how well do you and I actually know people with whom we associate?
Pride and prejudice can keep us bound in prisons of our own making.
Reaching beyond my own prejudices, I’ve been reading How to Know a Person by David Brooks for the second time. The author addresses the question: Why is it important to know other people?
For one thing, as David Brooks writes, “In how you see me, I will learn to see myself.”
In an age of virtual relationships called “friends” through social media and the emergence of AI (Artificial Intelligence), each of us needs reminders to actually spend time IRL (in real life) to know other people well.
“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.”
Little wonder that polarizing divisions have erupted among us. We don’t know what other people think, believe, or why they behave the way they do.
We don’t want to know.
Naturally, when it’s so easy to retreat behind a screen for hours a day, as self-referential beings, virtual relationships permit you and me to see ourselves any way we want. We can choose to limit influences, avoid aggravation, and minimize irritation from other people’s differences.
Friction that sometimes occurs in personal relationships might reveal and help me change something I don’t like about myself.
David Brooks links some of this growing distrust among people to the failure of schools and social institutions to teach the humanities. Literature and history reveal what goes on in the minds of marginalized people, exposing some of the obstacles to understanding other people. Even amid social connection in person, Brooks stated, “We just have access to the tiny portion they speak out loud.”
And that’s how you and I typically form our opinions and biases.
“Tiny portion,” of what people reveal by speaking, and then you and I form impressions, and often conclusions, based on appearance, bias, or social status.
It’s easy to think we know more than we do about people. In most cases, though, we see only what people want us to see. Image management.
David Brooks identifies education as part of the problem because he says education is focused on preparing people for a career. Even in school, teachers can sacrifice the more important life lessons of how to get along with people to prepare students for tests. Especially among people whose backgrounds, values, and priorities differ from our own, we need to learn how to relate.
“If you want to understand humanity, you have to focus on the thoughts and emotions of individuals, not just data groups.”
Socialization Education
With the beginning of a new school year, I’ve been thinking a lot about socialization through education. Remembering my own school days from elementary through a graduate degree where all sorts of people populate those memories, not everyone was someone I wanted to know.
I survived a few bad teachers and benefited from a number of good teachers I still remember fondly by name. Why? Because in seeing how they saw me, I learned to see myself. They helped me make decisions about the kind of person I wanted to be.
I’ll never forget my fourth grade teacher Miss Claussen. She made me and my classmate who couldn’t get along stand nose-to-nose with the glass in the top of the door between us until one of us apologized for whatever caused our disagreement. Miss Claussen stood by, arms folded across her chest, waiting.
Unlikely she could have guessed that I had determined to stand there till the sun went down.
Then Miss Claussen said something I’ve never forgotten. “The bigger person will apologize first.”
Pride collapsed. I couldn’t move fast enough to apologize, because in that moment, I wanted to be a bigger person. I wanted to please my teacher. Her words gave me something to aspire to.
From that moment, Veronica and I became allies. She and I weren’t so different after all. It took a crisis to uncover basic humanity.
I wish I could say I learned that lesson then and there, once and for all. Try softer. Yield instead of toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose arguments that fuel enmity. I’d rather switch than fight.
If I see an enemy, I also need to recognize the enemy within. That enemy within projects what I don’t like about myself onto people I don’t know or understand. Mote and beam, the Bible teaches that I recognize the evil in you because it exists within me.
Throughout my life education, I also have grown by identifying with characters in books and movies. Some characters I want to be like and other characters I wish didn’t exist, the world is filled of both.
Part 1 of Brooks’ book: I SEE YOU.
So how can you and I learn “the art of seeing others deeply”? To get know a person from actual relationships that develop over time? Does believing that Jesus loves people unlike me alter the way I see other people?
Jesus paid attention to the least significant people within His reach. In the Bible, the story about the woman at the well, Jesus told His disciples He needed to go through Samaria. Land of outcasts and peoples who were objects of extreme prejudice from the Jews, Samaritans were a mixed-race with corrupted religious practices. They said they believed in God, but they had adopted and added beliefs from the people of nations who had conquered the territories beyond Judah.
The apostles were appalled that Jesus would even speak to a woman, much less a Samaritan woman. The woman was surprised herself because she was used to being marginalized and ignored. She’d come at noon to draw water from a well, ostracized by the other women in the village. (Read the entire story in chapter 4 of John’s gospel.)
We live in the world surrounded by people like this woman. Their lives, their past, we encounter people whose differences make us fearful. We lack the insight and knowledge to even guess what life is like for them.
Do we see them? Or do we see through them?
“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.”
Curiouser and Curiouser
First of all, curiosity leads me to admit I lack the insight and knowledge to even guess what life is like for people whose life and lifestyle differs from mine. And what I don’t know can hurt me, keep me bound by prejudice, and make me afraid to get better acquainted.
Like David Brooks, I’m working harder to know and understand individuals, to avoid “group think,” to learn to read people the way I read and empathize with characters in stories. To know and be known.
Besides reading about people or trying to read people whose lives intersect with mine, I continue to journal. Journaling helps me discover how writing unknots some of the problems I encounter. Either knowing someone who sees and experiences life differently than I do, or better knowing myself, what I give time to write down amazes me. Often, like the psalmist, I have started out feeling one way about someone or something only to discover by processing through writing, that’s not what I think at all!
I want to be a bigger person.
Your Story, your turn:
Write out a brief account of a recent misunderstanding where either you misunderstood someone or they misunderstood you.
Does how you think the other person sees you reflect how you wish to see yourself? What gets in the way of mutual understanding? Pride or prejudice?
Will you risk getting to know someone on the other side of the glass door?
Knowing a person takes time and being together.
I want to see you. I learn to see myself. I let you see me.
