The Art of Truly Seeing Others

How learning to behold another person may be one of the most radical forms of love

We live surrounded by people, and yet so many of us feel unseen.

We can be in crowded rooms, workplaces, churches, families and even friendships and still carry a quiet sense that nobody really knows us.

Perhaps this is one of the great paradoxes of our time: we have never had more ways to connect, yet many of us have become increasingly disconnected from one another.

Something has happened to the way we encounter people.

We have become cautious.

Suspicious.

Distracted.

Preoccupied with ourselves.

We look at people, but do we really see them?

And perhaps that is a question worth asking—not only about society, but about ourselves.

When I look at another person, what do they experience?

Do they feel evaluated?

Ignored?

Interrupted?

Used as an audience?

Or do they somehow experience:

“I am glad you are here. I see you. You matter to me.”

That may be one of the most beautiful things one human being can give another.

When I am insecure, I want to be seen

I have been thinking about this in the context of my own struggle with conversation.

When I don't feel safe inside myself, my attention naturally turns inward.

How am I coming across?

Do they think I'm interesting?

Do they respect me?

Am I saying the right thing?

Do they think I'm intelligent?

Am I being ignored?

Am I becoming insignificant?

And when so much of my attention is occupied with myself, something unfortunate happens.

There is less of me available to notice you.

I may be talking to you, but part of me is actually talking to myself about you.

I may be listening, but I am also preparing my response.

I may ask questions, but sometimes the question is simply a bridge to something I want to say.

And sometimes, without even realizing it, I may try to make myself bigger.

I explain.

I advise.

I demonstrate what I know.

I tell my story.

I correct.

I compare.

I become the expert.

Not necessarily because I think I am better than you.

Sometimes it is because feeling small is unbearable.

If I can make myself impressive, perhaps I won't have to feel insignificant.

If I can make you admire me, perhaps I will feel worthy.

If I can control the conversation, perhaps I won't feel vulnerable.

But there is a terrible irony here.

The more desperately I need to be seen, the less capable I may become of seeing you.

And the other person can feel it.

What feels like self-protection to me may feel like indifference to them.

What feels like insecurity to me may feel like arrogance to them.

What feels like nervousness to me may feel like disinterest to them.

And perhaps some of the people who have experienced me as cold, distracted or difficult were not encountering a person who didn't care.

They were encountering a person who was struggling to feel safe enough to care freely.

That doesn't erase the impact.

But it helps me understand it.

And understanding creates the possibility of change.

From diminisher to illuminator

David Brooks uses a beautiful distinction between people who diminish others and those who illuminate them.

A diminisher somehow leaves you feeling smaller.

An illuminator seems to shine attention on you.

The illuminator doesn't necessarily say extraordinary things.

They may not be the funniest person in the room.

They may not be particularly charismatic.

But when you are with them, something happens.

You become more alive.

You find yourself talking about things you didn't expect to talk about.

You remember something you had forgotten.

You feel interesting.

You feel understood.

You feel that your experience matters.

The illuminator has learned a rare human skill:

to make another person feel significant without needing to become significant themselves.

That is a skill worth learning.

And perhaps it begins with three simple movements:

the gaze, accompaniment and conversation.

1. The gaze

Conversation begins before the first word.

It begins with the eyes.

When we meet someone, something inside them is asking:

“What kind of person is looking at me?”

Am I being evaluated?

Am I being dismissed?

Am I being tolerated?

Am I being sized up?

Or am I being welcomed?

We all know the difference between someone looking at us and someone actually seeing us.

A loving gaze can change a person's entire demeanor.

Someone who entered a room looking stern can suddenly become warm.

Someone who seemed withdrawn can begin to open up.

Someone who looked insignificant can suddenly become animated.

Why?

Because attention communicates value.

When I give you my undivided attention, I am saying without words:

You are worth my attention.

And perhaps this is particularly important in a world where our attention is constantly fragmented.

Our phones compete for our eyes.

Notifications compete for our minds.

Our worries compete for our presence.

Even while someone is talking to us, part of us can be somewhere else.

To look at another person and actually remain there is becoming almost countercultural.

It is a small act of love.

2. Accompaniment

There is another word I love: accompaniment.

To accompany someone is not necessarily to fix them.

It is not to rush them toward where we think they should be.

It is not to explain their pain.

Sometimes it is simply to stay with them where they are.

Imagine someone grieving.

Perhaps what they need most isn't an explanation.

It isn't a theological answer.

It isn't even a carefully constructed expression of sympathy.

Perhaps they simply need someone to sit beside them.

To put an arm around them.

To stand with them in the hallway.

To share the silence.

To say, in effect:

“I am not going to make you walk through this moment alone.”

There is something profoundly human about that.

Sometimes we try to pull people out of their pain because their pain makes us uncomfortable.

But accompaniment asks us to resist that impulse.

Instead of immediately trying to lift someone up, perhaps we need to be willing to get down on the floor with them.

Not because we want them to remain there.

But because love is willing to enter another person's experience before trying to change it.

Jesus did this.

He did not love people from a safe distance.

He entered their world.

He touched lepers.

He ate with sinners.

He wept at Lazarus' tomb.

He stopped for the blind man.

He allowed the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years to interrupt Him.

Again and again, He gave people something they desperately needed:

His attention.

3. Conversation

And then there is conversation.

If the gaze says, “I see you,” and accompaniment says, “I am willing to be with you,” conversation says:

“I want to know you.”

This is where our questions matter.

But perhaps we have misunderstood what a good question is.

A good question isn't simply one that keeps conversation going.

A good question gives another person permission to reveal something of themselves.

Instead of asking only:

“What do you believe?”

we might ask:

“How did you come to believe that?”

The first question can produce a position.

The second invites a story.

And stories humanize people.

Someone's opinion may frustrate me.

But when I hear the story that produced that opinion, something changes.

I begin to see the person behind the position.

I begin to understand the road they have travelled.

I may still disagree.

But disagreement no longer requires dehumanization.

And that is desperately needed in our age.

Don't be a topper

There is another conversational habit I am learning to recognize in myself.

Someone tells me something difficult.

And immediately I have a story.

They say:

“I've had a really difficult week.”

And I respond:

“You think that's bad? Let me tell you what happened to me.”

They share their struggle.

I share a bigger struggle.

They tell me about their pain.

I tell them about mine.

They mention something they accomplished.

I tell them about something I accomplished.

We call it conversation.

But sometimes it is actually competition.

We are both trying to occupy the center.

Perhaps the better response is much simpler:

“That sounds difficult. Tell me more.”

And then actually listen.

Not preparing my story.

Not waiting for an opening.

Not comparing.

Just listening.

Because sometimes the most loving thing I can do is resist the temptation to make their story about me.

Ask questions that help people discover their own worth

Perhaps one of the simplest ways to become an illuminator is to become genuinely curious.

Not artificially curious.

Not using conversational techniques.

Actually curious.

What makes this person come alive?

What do they love?

What are they learning?

What are they carrying?

What are they proud of?

What are they afraid of?

What has surprised them?

What has shaped them?

Some questions open doors:

“What has been bringing you joy lately?”

“What are you looking forward to?”

“What have you been learning?”

“What are you most proud of?”

“What has changed you?”

“What would you do if you weren't afraid?”

“If this season of your life were a chapter, what would you call it?”

And sometimes the most powerful question is simply:

“Tell me more.”

That question can communicate something profound:

I am not bored.

I am not rushing you.

Your experience matters.

I want to understand.

Beholding rather than inspecting

There is a difference between observing a person and beholding them.

We observe people all the time.

We categorize them.

We assess them.

We form opinions about them.

We decide:

He's arrogant.

She's difficult.

He's conservative.

She's liberal.

He's successful.

She's insecure.

He's annoying.

She's impressive.

We reduce a whole human being to a single characteristic.

But to behold someone is different.

To behold is to remain long enough to see the whole flow of their being.

The confidence and the insecurity.

The strength and the weakness.

The humor and the sadness.

The kindness and the selfishness.

The courage and the fear.

The beautiful and the broken.

The flashes of fierceness.

The moments of tenderness.

The wounds nobody knows about.

The dreams they haven't told anyone.

A human being is never just the category we have placed them in.

There is always more.

And perhaps love begins when we become willing to discover that more.

Defiant humanism

David Brooks calls this posture “defiant humanism.”

The word defiant is important.

Because the world gives us plenty of reasons to become cynical.

Trust is declining.

People are increasingly divided.

Social media rewards outrage.

Political identities can become more important than relationships.

We are constantly encouraged to sort people into us and them.

And when we are frightened, our natural response is often to retreat behind walls.

Defiant humanism says:

No.

I will not allow a cynical world to make me cynical.

I will not allow polarization to make me stop seeing people.

I will not allow betrayal to convince me that everyone is untrustworthy.

I will not allow fear to close my heart.

I will remain curious.

I will remain vulnerable.

I will keep looking for the human being behind the position.

I will keep trying to see.

That is defiance.

Not naïveté.

Not the denial of evil.

Not the absence of boundaries.

But a refusal to allow the brokenness of the world to determine the condition of my heart.

“What you're looking at is also you.”

James Baldwin captured something profound about our tendency to separate ourselves from other people.

When we look at someone we consider frightening, foolish, selfish or even monstrous, it is tempting to say:

“I am nothing like that person.”

But another human being is always capable of revealing something about humanity—including something about ourselves.

The capacity for cruelty exists within humanity.

So does extraordinary goodness.

The person I admire and the person I despise are both human beings.

And I am human too.

Perhaps the question is not simply:

“What is wrong with that person?”

Perhaps it is also:

“What kind of person am I becoming as I look at them?”

Am I becoming more contemptuous?

More fearful?

More self-righteous?

More closed?

Or am I becoming more capable of truth, compassion, courage and love?

The person in front of me is not merely an object of my judgment.

They are an invitation to decide who I will be.

And then there is Jesus

For me, this becomes even deeper when viewed through the eyes of Christ.

Jesus did not merely teach people that they were valuable.

He looked at them as though they were valuable.

Zacchaeus was a sinner.

Jesus looked up.

Matthew was a tax collector.

Jesus called him.

The Samaritan woman had a complicated history.

Jesus stayed in conversation with her.

The woman caught in sin stood exposed before a crowd.

Jesus did not reduce her to her sin.

Peter denied Him.

Jesus did not reduce Peter to his failure.

The disciples were constantly misunderstanding Him.

And yet He continued to walk with them.

Jesus seemed to possess an extraordinary ability to see beyond the label and into the person.

He could see the wound beneath the behavior.

The hunger beneath the question.

The fear beneath the denial.

The faith beneath the trembling.

The person beneath the sin.

Perhaps Christian maturity is, in part, learning to look at people that way.

Not excusing sin.

Not abandoning truth.

Not becoming naïve.

But refusing to reduce a human being to the worst thing about them.

Because before I know what someone believes, I know something more fundamental:

they are made in the image of God.

Before I know their politics, their failures, their personality or their history, they possess a dignity that I did not give them and cannot take away.

And perhaps when I look at another person, I should try to remember:

Christ loves this person.

Even if I don't understand them.

Even if I disagree with them.

Even if they irritate me.

Even if they are difficult.

Even if they are broken.

Even if they have broken something in me.

They remain someone whom God sees.

And if God sees them, perhaps I should learn to see them too.

The healing of attention

This brings me back to where I began.

Perhaps I cannot truly see another person until I become a little safer inside myself.

When I am desperate to prove my worth, I have very little attention left for yours.

But when I begin to believe that I am already loved, I don't need to occupy the center.

I can listen.

I can become curious.

I can let you be brilliant.

I can let you tell the better story.

I can admit that I don't know.

I can ask another question.

I can remain silent.

I can say:

“Tell me more.”

And mean it.

Maybe healing doesn't necessarily make us more talkative.

Maybe it makes us more available.

Available to listen.

Available to notice.

Available to accompany.

Available to wonder.

Available to behold.

And perhaps that is what genuine connection requires.

Not a perfect personality.

Not extraordinary conversational skills.

Not the ability to make everyone like us.

Just the willingness to be present enough to say:

“You are here.

I see you.

I am interested in you.

Your story matters.

Tell me more.”

The courage to see

We live in an age that constantly gives us reasons not to trust.

Reasons to withdraw.

Reasons to categorize.

Reasons to judge.

Reasons to protect ourselves.

And sometimes protection is necessary.

But there is another danger.

We can become so determined not to be hurt that we stop allowing ourselves to encounter people.

We can become so afraid of being unseen that we become incapable of seeing.

That is why perhaps one of the most radical things we can do today is something remarkably simple:

Look at another person and refuse to reduce them.

See beyond the label.

Listen beyond the opinion.

Stay beyond the awkwardness.

Ask beyond the obvious.

Look beyond the behavior.

And wait long enough for the person to emerge.

Because perhaps every human being is carrying a story that cannot be seen at first glance.

And perhaps love is the willingness to stay long enough to discover it.

I don't need to be the most interesting person in the room.

I don't need to be impressive.

I don't need to make myself bigger.

I don't need to win the conversation.

I don't even need to know what to say.

I can simply look at you and wonder:

Who are you?

What has your life been like?

What have you suffered that I cannot see?

What do you love?

What makes you come alive?

What are you carrying?

What are you hoping for?

And then:

Tell me more.

Perhaps this is part of what healing ultimately gives us—not simply the ability to feel safe enough to live, but the freedom to become safe enough to see.

And perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give another human being is the experience of being genuinely, tenderly, unhurriedly seen.