How to Know a Person

How to Know a Person Plot Summary

Introduction

I once witnessed a moment that changed how I understand human connection. At a small café in Paris, an elderly man sat alone, his weathered face a canvas of untold stories. A young waitress approached, and instead of the usual transactional exchange, she paused, truly looking at him. "Monsieur, you remind me of my grandfather," she said softly. "He had the same kind eyes." The man's face transformed - decades seemed to melt away as he smiled, suddenly visible in a world where he had felt invisible. This simple act of truly seeing another person lies at the heart of human connection. In our increasingly disconnected world, we've become experts at looking without seeing, hearing without listening, being present without connecting. Yet nothing shapes our lives more profoundly than the quality of our relationships - how deeply we see others and allow ourselves to be seen. The pages that follow explore this fundamental human skill: the art of truly understanding those around us. Through stories of ordinary encounters and extraordinary connections, we'll discover how to pierce through the veil of superficial interaction to recognize the full humanity in others. This journey isn't just about improving relationships; it's about transforming how we move through the world, finding meaning in connection, and becoming the kind of person who illuminates rather than diminishes those around them.

Chapter 1: The Power of Being Truly Seen

David Brooks grew up in what he calls "the other kind of Jewish family" - not the warm, emotional stereotype from Fiddler on the Roof, but a reserved "Think Yiddish, act British" household. While there was love in his home, it wasn't expressively demonstrated. This upbringing shaped him into someone somewhat detached from his emotions. As a child, his nursery school teacher observed that he often stood apart, watching other children rather than playing with them. This aloofness became part of his personality. By high school, Brooks had taken up permanent residence inside his own head. He felt most alive when engaged in solitary writing. His social understanding was limited - when a girl he liked preferred another boy, he was genuinely confused, thinking, "What is she thinking? I write way better than that guy!" His emotional detachment continued through college at the University of Chicago, where the intellectual atmosphere reinforced rather than challenged his tendencies. Ten years after college, Brooks describes himself as pleasant but inhibited - not someone easy to know or who found it easy to know others. He was skilled at emotional escape, making meaningful eye contact with people's shoes when they revealed vulnerabilities, then excusing himself for "important appointments." He repressed his feelings as a default mode, driven by fear of intimacy, vulnerability, and social ineptitude. One incident symbolizes this repressed way of living. At a baseball game, a shattered bat flew into the stands and landed at his feet. Instead of celebrating this rare souvenir with excitement, he simply placed it at his feet and sat expressionless as everyone stared at him. Looking back, he wanted to scream at himself: "Show a little joy!" But when it came to spontaneous displays of emotion, he "had the emotional capacity of a head of cabbage." Life gradually tenderized him. Becoming a father was an emotional revolution. Later came broken relationships, public failures, and the vulnerability of aging. These experiences introduced him to deeper, repressed parts of himself. A turning point came during a panel discussion at New York's Public Theater, where he found himself surrounded by expressive theater people. The atmosphere was entirely different from the intellectual panels he was accustomed to - there were group hugs, emotional sharing, and tissues for tears. Even Brooks found himself "emoting things" in this environment. Afterward, he vowed to alter his life, thinking, "I'm the guy who had his life changed by a panel discussion." Through this journey, Brooks came to understand that living in emotional detachment is actually a withdrawal from life - an estrangement not just from others but from oneself. By learning to be more vulnerable and emotionally expressive, he discovered that seeing others deeply and being deeply seen is perhaps the most essential human skill, the ultimate gift we can give to others and to ourselves.

Chapter 2: Illumination: Casting a Loving Gaze

While visiting Waco, Texas, Brooks was searching for community builders - people who knit towns and neighborhoods together. Several locals directed him to LaRue Dorsey, a 93-year-old Black woman who had spent most of her career as a teacher. Over breakfast, Mrs. Dorsey presented herself as stern and disciplined, emphasizing how she "loved her students enough to discipline them." Brooks felt somewhat intimidated by her formality. Midway through their meal, a mutual friend named Jimmy Dorrell entered the diner. Jimmy, a white man in his sixties who had built a church for homeless people under a highway overpass, spotted Mrs. Dorsey across the room. His face broke into an enormous smile as he approached their table. He grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her vigorously (harder than one should shake a 93-year-old), and exclaimed loudly: "Mrs. Dorsey! Mrs. Dorsey! You're the best! You're the best! I love you! I love you!" In that instant, Mrs. Dorsey's stern demeanor vanished completely. The disciplinarian facade melted away, revealing a joyous, delighted expression that made her look like a nine-year-old girl. By projecting a different quality of attention, Jimmy had called forth an entirely different version of her. Jimmy was what Brooks calls an "Illuminator" - someone who shines the brightness of their care on people, making them feel bigger, deeper, respected, and lit up. This encounter revealed to Brooks the transformative power of attention. Each of us carries a characteristic way of showing up in the world that sets the tone for how people interact with us. Some enter a room with warmth and openness; others appear cool and closed. Our gaze - that first sight - represents our posture toward the world. A person looking for beauty tends to find wonders, while someone looking for threats finds danger. Someone who beams warmth brings out the glowing sides of others, while formality elicits stiffness and detachment. Jimmy's way of seeing Mrs. Dorsey stemmed from his conception of what a person is. As a pastor, he saw each person as created in God's image, endowed with infinite value and dignity. When he looked at someone, he was trying to see them as Jesus would - with eyes that lavish love on the meek, the lowly, the marginalized. This reverent awareness of each person's inherent dignity is a precondition for seeing people well. The Illuminator's gaze is not merely observational or scrutinizing but warm, respectful, and admiring. It answers the question everyone unconsciously asks when meeting someone: "Am I a person to you? Do you care about me? Am I a priority?" The Illuminator's gaze radiates respect, recognizing that every person is unique, unrepeatable, and superior in some way. It approaches each individual not as a puzzle to be solved but as a mystery that can never be fully fathomed. In our world, we encounter both Diminishers and Illuminators. Diminishers make people feel small and unseen, treating others as objects to be used rather than persons to be known. Illuminators, through their persistent curiosity and trained perception, help others feel bigger, deeper, and more fully themselves. They create what E.M. Forster's biographer called "an inverse charisma" - making others feel so intensely listened to that they become their most honest, sharpest, and best selves.

Chapter 3: Hard Conversations Across Differences

In recent years, as society has grown more bitterly divided, Brooks traveled extensively, having conversations across America's deepening divides. While most interactions were warm, many contained moments that were fraught, hard, and angry. In Greenville, South Carolina, he met an elderly Black woman filled with smoldering fury because young Black girls in her neighborhood faced even greater challenges than she had in the 1950s. At a baseball game, an ardent Trump supporter screamed in his face: "You're a fucking asshole!" In New Mexico, a Native American matriarch simmered with rage throughout a meal before finally venting her anger about historical injustices. One particularly challenging exchange occurred during a 2022 panel discussion on the "culture war." For Brooks, this term encompassed various conflicts over LGBTQ issues, abortion, religion in public spaces, and educational curricula. However, his fellow panelist - a prominent Black intellectual - heard the phrase as an attack on accurate teaching of Black history in schools. For her, the culture war represented white supremacy reasserting itself. Though Brooks agreed that attacks on teaching African American history were often racial dog whistles, he tried to contextualize the culture war as a broader clash between progressive and conservative values. His co-panelist countered that current attacks on Black history paralleled post-Civil War reactionary movements that established Jim Crow laws. While there was no outright confrontation, the emotional undercurrents were problematic. She displayed contempt for his perspective, while he felt both powerless and afraid - a white male discussing race with a Black woman who had spent her career studying the issue. From this experience and others, Brooks learned crucial lessons about navigating difficult conversations across differences. First, consider the conditions before focusing on content. People from marginalized groups often experience a chasm between who they are and how they're perceived, while members of dominant groups rarely face this disconnect. Second, every conversation happens on two levels: the official topic and the actual emotional exchange underneath. With each comment, participants either increase safety or heighten threat, show respect or disrespect, reveal intentions or hide them. When conversations go badly, motivations deteriorate. What begins as a genuine desire to find truth becomes a competition to win the argument and prove superiority. This is when rhetorical dirty tricks emerge - like labeling others to discredit them ("You're reactionary," "You're woke"). As Micah Goodman observed, "A great conversation is between two people who think the other is wrong. A bad conversation is between those who think something is wrong with you." Brooks discovered that hard conversations are difficult because people in different life circumstances construct fundamentally different realities. Research by psychologist Dennis Proffitt illustrates this dramatically: people with heavy backpacks perceive hills as steeper than those without backpacks. Athletes see hills as less steep than non-athletes. We literally see the world differently based on our capabilities and circumstances. This extends to social perception. A wealthy person entering a luxury store sees a different reality than someone who cannot afford anything inside. Yale students see the campus as a collection of accessible buildings with different purposes, while local residents without access see an imposing, monolithic fortress. We perceive the world not as it objectively exists but "as it is for us" - shaped by our abilities, experiences, and social position. There is no way to make hard conversations easy, but we can improve them. When someone shares experiences of exclusion or injustice, resist the urge to redirect the conversation to your perspective. Instead, stay within their standpoint to understand how the world looks to them. Remember that those with less power in any structure often have greater awareness of the dynamics at play - "a servant knows more about his master than the master knows about the servant." By stepping into another's perspective with genuine curiosity and respect, we begin building the trust necessary for authentic connection across our deepest divides.

Chapter 4: Walking with Those in Pain

Brooks' most searing encounter with depression came when it struck his oldest friend, Peter Marks. Since age eleven, their friendship had been built around play - basketball, softball, teasing, and turning even mundane activities like eating a burger into opportunities for joy. Pete was "a rare combo of normal and extraordinary" - masculine in the best sense, a devoted father, and a loving husband who practiced ophthalmology with dedication and compassion. Though they had discussed work stresses over the years, Brooks didn't grasp the severity of Pete's condition until spring 2019. During a weekend visit, Brooks' wife immediately noticed something was wrong - "a light had gone out." One June afternoon, Pete pulled them aside and confessed he wasn't himself. Despite doing what he loved most - playing basketball, swimming in the lake - he couldn't enjoy anything. He was worried for his family and himself, asking for their continued friendship and support. It was the first time Brooks had seen such pain in his friend - what turned out to be severe depression. Despite Brooks' efforts to help, Pete died by suicide in April 2022. At first, Brooks made common mistakes in trying to support his friend. He offered advice about activities Pete might find rewarding, reminding him of his many blessings - what psychologists call "positive reframing." He later learned that when you give a depressed person advice on how to get better, you're often just demonstrating that you don't understand their condition. Positive reframing can make sufferers feel worse about themselves for being unable to enjoy what should be enjoyable. Brooks gradually realized that a friend's role in these circumstances isn't to cheer the person up but to acknowledge their reality, to hear and respect them, to show you haven't given up or walked away. As Pete spoke of his illness, it sometimes seemed as if there were two of him - one enveloped in pain and another observing and trying to understand what was happening. The observing Pete sought the best doctors and tried various approaches, but the cloud wouldn't lift. One helpful action Brooks took was sharing a video of Washington Post columnist Mike Gerson's sermon about his own depression. Gerson described depression as a "malfunction of the instrument we use to determine reality" and spoke of the lying voices that took residence in his mind: "You are a burden to your friends, you have no future, no one would miss you." This resonated deeply with Pete, validating his experience of the obsessive-compulsive voices attacking him from inside his own head. After Pete's death, Brooks learned more about supporting those with depression. Stephen Fry advised: "If you know someone who's depressed, please resolve to never ask them why. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It's hard to be a friend to someone who's depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do." Brooks wishes he had sent more small touches - notes and emails letting Pete know he was on his mind, with no response necessary, simply saying: I'm with you. The challenge of seeing someone with depression lies in the radical alteration of their reality. In depression, Andrew Solomon found showers terrifying, though he simultaneously knew this was ridiculous. Pete saw a world without pleasure. When trying to understand a depressed person, we're peering into a nightmarish world that doesn't follow our logic. There is no easy way to enter this altered reality; we can only persevere through endless flexibility and humility, accepting that none of it makes sense while continuing to offer the comfort of being seen.

Chapter 5: Understanding the Stories We Tell

Dan McAdams, a Northwestern psychology professor, studies how people construct their personal narratives. He invites research subjects to campus and, over several hours, asks questions that elicit their life stories - about high points, low points, and turning points. Half the people he interviews end up crying at some point, recalling difficult events. At the end, most are elated. They tell him that no one has ever asked about their life story before, and some even try to return the research fee, saying, "This has been the best afternoon I've had in a long time." This revelation struck Brooks as profound: we live in a society where people don't get to tell their stories. We work alongside others for years without knowing their tales. Nicholas Epley, a behavioral psychologist at the University of Chicago, noticed a similar phenomenon during his train commute. Though social connection is the primary source of human happiness, no one on the train was talking to anyone. Everyone was absorbed in headphones and screens. Epley conducted experiments where he induced people to converse with fellow commuters. Afterward, researchers asked participants how they enjoyed the trip. The responses were overwhelmingly positive - people, introverts and extroverts alike, reported that commutes spent talking with someone were much more enjoyable than those spent staring at screens. Yet people rarely initiate these conversations because they consistently underestimate how much they'll enjoy them, how much they'll learn, and how quickly others will engage in meaningful exchange. Since learning about this research, Brooks has become more likely to talk with strangers on planes and trains. On a recent flight, instead of burying himself in a book, he asked his elderly seatmate about his life. The man shared his remarkable journey - immigrating alone from Russia at seventeen, starting by sweeping factory floors before building an export business. He showed Brooks photos from his recent Italian vacation - cruising on yachts surrounded by glamorous people at age eighty. Though not someone who would be in Brooks' inner circle, the encounter provided a fascinating glimpse into another life. Brooks has also shifted from comment-making conversations to storytelling conversations. Psychologist Jerome Bruner distinguished between two thinking modes: the paradigmatic (analytical, argument-based) and the narrative (story-based). While paradigmatic thinking helps understand data and analyze trends, narrative thinking is essential for understanding unique individuals. Stories capture how a thousand influences shape a life, how people struggle and strive, how lives are knocked about by lucky and unlucky breaks. Our culture is paradigmatic-rich but narrative-poor. Political talk shows avoid personal dimensions, focusing on partisan positions and gotcha questions. Brooks now pushes against this trend, asking not "What do you think about X?" but "How did you come to believe X?" - inviting people to tell stories about their journey to their current views. Instead of asking about values abstractly, he asks, "Tell me about the person who shaped your values most." He takes people back in time: Where did you grow up? When did you know you wanted to spend your life this way? The ability to craft an accurate and coherent life story is vital to leading a meaningful life. You can't know who you are without knowing how to tell your story. You can't have a stable identity without giving meaning to life events by turning them into a coherent narrative. You can only endure present pains if you can see them as part of a story that will yield future benefits. As Isak Dinesen said, "All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story." When we listen to others' stories, we're not just hearing facts - we're witnessing how they've constructed meaning from the raw materials of their lives. By creating spaces where people can share these narratives, we offer one of the greatest gifts possible: the opportunity to be truly known.

Chapter 6: How Culture Shapes Our Perspectives

Zora Neale Hurston was born in Alabama in 1891, moving to Eatonville, Florida at age three. Eatonville was an all-Black town with Black leadership - a mayor, town marshal, and city council. From the beginning, Hurston showed remarkable spirit. She would approach passing carriages, asking strangers, "Don't you want me to go a piece of the way with you?" Charmed by her confidence, drivers would lift her into their carriages, chat with her, and then let her out to walk home. Her father, a carpenter and later a preacher known as "God's Battle Axe," never forgave Zora for being born a girl and never warmed to her. Her mother, however, encouraged Zora's spirited nature, often telling her, "Jump at the sun. We may not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground." This tension between her parents' attitudes toward her assertiveness shaped her development. The social center of Eatonville was Joe Clarke's store porch, where men gathered to boast, gossip, and exchange opinions. Though young Zora wasn't allowed to linger there, she would drag her feet whenever passing by, absorbing the rich language, mock insults, and folklore of the Black South - stories about Brer Rabbit, God and the Devil, and various animals. These "lying sessions," as the men called their storytelling marathons, formed the raw material for Hurston's later writing career. Biographer Valerie Boyd notes, "Essentially everything that Zora Hurston would grow up to write, and to believe, had its genesis in Eatonville." This pattern is common - there's usually a sacred spot on earth that shapes us, a place we never quite leave. For Brooks, it was Manhattan's East Side, where five generations of his family had lived. "I may never live in New York again," he writes, "but I'll never be able to completely live anywhere else." After her mother's death, Hurston's family scattered, and she began wandering - Jacksonville, Nashville, Baltimore, Washington, Harlem. She studied at Howard University, Columbia, and Barnard (where she was the only Black student). She became central to the Harlem Renaissance alongside friends like Langston Hughes. Later, studying anthropology under Franz Boas, she returned to Florida to collect the folklore, dances, and customs she had grown up with. "I'm getting inside Negro art and lore," she wrote to Hughes. "This is going to be big." Hurston's experience illustrates how culture shapes perspective in profound ways. Research by Alberto Alesina, Paola Giuliano, and Nathan Nunn found that people descended from plow-using agricultural societies tend to have stronger gender roles, while those from non-plow farming backgrounds have less defined gender roles. People from sheepherding cultures tend to be more individualistic, while rice-farming cultures foster interdependence. These cultural differences affect how we literally see the world. In one study, American and Taiwanese children were shown pictures of a man, woman, and child and asked which two go together. American children typically grouped the man and woman (both adults), while Taiwanese children paired the woman and child (caregiver relationship). When shown a chicken, cow, and grass, Americans grouped the chicken and cow (both animals), while Taiwanese children paired the cow and grass (functional relationship). Americans sorted by categories; Taiwanese sorted by relationships. Historian David Hackett Fischer's book Albion's Seed traces how different English regional cultures settled in different American regions, bringing distinct attitudes about social order, time, power, and freedom. These patterns, established 350 years ago, still influence regional differences today - from murder rates to educational attainment to voting patterns. Understanding someone well requires seeing them both as a unique individual and as shaped by their cultural inheritance. When we reduce people to categories (Black/white, Republican/Democrat), we dehumanize them. The challenge is to hold two perspectives simultaneously: appreciating how group culture forms over generations and shapes a person, while also seeing how each individual crafts their own life, often in defiance of group expectations. As Robert Penn Warren wrote, "What you are is an expression of History."

Chapter 7: The Wisdom of Deep Listening

A second-grade teacher once told a struggling student, "You know, you're really good at thinking before you speak." This simple observation transformed the girl's year - what she had perceived as a weakness became a strength. The teacher had truly seen her. Similarly, Brooks recalls an eleventh-grade English teacher who barked at him, "David, you're trying to get by on glibness. Stop it!" Though momentarily humiliated, he felt strangely honored: "Wow—she really knows me!" He learned to fight against his facility with words, to slow down and think more deeply. These moments of being truly seen represent wisdom in action. Wisdom isn't knowing about physics or geography; it's knowing about people - seeing deeply into who they are and how they should move through life's complexities. Brooks' view of wisdom has transformed over the years. He once held the conventional view that wise people are lofty sages who dispense life-altering advice like Yoda or Solomon. Now he takes almost the opposite view: wise people don't tell us what to do; they witness our stories. The truly wise create a safe space where we can navigate life's ambiguities and contradictions. They help us process our thoughts and emotions, expanding our meaning-making rather than imposing their own solutions. Their essential gift is receptivity - the capacity to receive what others are sending. This isn't passive; it involves creating an atmosphere of hospitality where people feel free to be honest with themselves and others. Tracy Kidder demonstrated this wisdom in his book Strength in What Remains, chronicling the life of Deo, a young man who fled genocide in Burundi and arrived in New York with $200, no English, and no contacts. Kidder spent two years conversing with Deo, accompanying him to places where his story unfolded - from Central Park where he had slept homeless to the hospital in Burundi where he had hidden under a bed while his neighbors were massacred outside. When they approached that hospital years later, Kidder felt a creeping sensation across his skin - some evil presence in the place. "Maybe we should just go back," he suggested. Deo replied, "You may not see the ocean but right now we are in the middle of the ocean and we have to keep swimming." Through patient, attentive listening and physical presence in these spaces, Kidder created a rich portrait that enables readers to see the world through Deo's eyes. Therapist Lori Gottlieb showed similar wisdom with a difficult client named John - a narcissistic, Emmy-winning TV writer who treated everyone, including her, with contempt. Rather than reducing him to a diagnosis, Gottlieb maintained "compassion, compassion, compassion," intuiting that beneath his arrogance lay hidden pain. Her approach was: "In this room, I'm going to see you, and you'll try to hide, but I'll still see you, and it's going to be okay when I do." Her patience was eventually rewarded when John revealed that his son Gabe had died in a car accident while John was driving. This trauma explained his defensive behavior. As John learned to tell a truer story about his life, he found moments of happiness and acceptance. "I don't want your head to get too big," he told Gottlieb, "but I thought, you have a more complete picture of my total humanity than anyone else in my life." Wisdom isn't a trait possessed by an individual but a social skill practiced within relationships. It emerges when people come together to form what Parker Palmer called a "community of truth" - whether in a classroom, a conversation at a coffee shop, or even the relationship between an author and reader. When we are in such a community, we try on each other's perspectives, taking journeys into each other's minds. In these spaces, something magical happens. As cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter observed, when we communicate deeply, the same mental "circuits" or "loops" flow through different brains. We begin thinking as one shared organism, anticipating each other, finishing each other's sentences. This goes beyond empathy to a genuine interpenetration of minds in ceaseless conversation.

Summary

At its heart, this exploration of human connection reveals a profound truth: seeing others deeply and being deeply seen is not merely a social nicety but the foundation of a meaningful life. Through stories ranging from Brooks' own journey from emotional detachment to openness, to Jimmy's illuminating gaze that transformed Mrs. Dorsey, to the wisdom of those who walk alongside others in pain, we discover that truly knowing another person is both an art and a moral act. It requires us to cast what philosopher Iris Murdoch called a "just and loving attention" on those around us. The journey toward becoming an Illuminator - someone who makes others feel bigger, deeper, and more fully themselves - begins with a simple shift in posture. Instead of approaching others with judgment or indifference, we can approach with curiosity and reverence, recognizing the infinite dignity in each person we meet. We can learn to listen not just to respond but to understand, to ask questions that invite stories rather than statements, to step into another's perspective even when it differs radically from our own. As we practice these skills, we discover that the quality of our lives depends not on grand achievements but on the everyday acts of seeing and being seen. In a world increasingly marked by disconnection and division, nothing could be more revolutionary than the decision to illuminate rather than diminish those around us. As W.H. Auden wrote, "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me." This, perhaps, is wisdom's greatest lesson - that in our capacity to truly see others lies our own deepest fulfillment.

About Author

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David Brooks

David Brooks is one of the nation’s leading writers and commentators. He is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, a writer for The Atlantic, and appears regularly on PBS Newshour. He is the bestselling author of The Second Mountain, The Road to Character, The Social Animal, Bobos in Paradise, and On Paradise Drive.Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

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