How to Know a Person
The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
Book Edition Details
Summary
"How to Know a Person (2023) challenges us to set aside our egos and look beyond people’s superficial traits to really get to know them: their stories, their passions, their motivations, and more. It acknowledges that being able to see someone and make them feel seen is hard – and yet it’s essential for cultivating healthy relationships. Fortunately, with some dedication, we can all learn how to have healthier, deeper conversations; give people quality attention; and see people in all their deli"
Introduction
Sarah had always prided herself on being perceptive. As a manager at a tech company, she thought she knew her team well. But one Tuesday morning, her star employee Marcus surprised everyone by submitting his resignation. "I just don't feel seen here," he explained quietly. Sarah was stunned. She had given Marcus excellent reviews, promoted him twice, and considered him a key player. How had she missed something so fundamental? This moment of recognition haunts many of us. In our hyperconnected yet paradoxically isolated world, we often mistake knowing about someone for truly knowing them. We collect data points—where they went to school, what they do for work, their favorite restaurants—yet remain strangers to their inner landscape. We live surrounded by people whose deepest fears, greatest longings, and most formative experiences remain invisible to us. The art of truly seeing another person is perhaps the most essential skill we never learn. It's not about gathering information or making quick judgments based on surface behaviors. It's about developing the capacity to perceive the rich, complex human being behind the roles and masks we all wear. When we master this art, we don't just become better friends, partners, or colleagues—we become more fully human ourselves. The journey toward understanding others invariably leads us to greater self-awareness and deeper meaning in our daily interactions.
The Power of Being Seen: From Isolation to Connection
David Brooks discovered his own limitations the hard way. Despite a successful career as a columnist and commentator, he realized that his "Think Yiddish, act British" upbringing had left him emotionally reserved and relationally clumsy. He could analyze political trends and social movements with precision, but when faced with genuine human vulnerability, he would make meaningful eye contact with his shoes and excuse himself to keep a "vitally important appointment with his dry cleaner." The turning point came during an unlikely setting—a panel discussion at the Public Theater in New York. Unlike the sterile think-tank events he was accustomed to, this gathering was alive with authentic emotion. The participants hugged backstage, cheered each other on, and weren't afraid to cry during the discussion. Brooks found himself moved by this display of genuine human connection and vowed to change his approach to life. His transformation wasn't immediate, but gradually he learned to see what he had been missing. He began to notice the epidemic of invisibility around him—people desperately longing to be truly known but lacking the skills to connect authentically. He observed couples who had grown apart despite living together for decades, parents who had lost touch with their adult children, and colleagues who worked side by side for years without ever really seeing each other. This awakening revealed a profound truth: our capacity to truly see others isn't just a nice social skill—it's the foundation of meaningful existence. When we feel genuinely seen and understood, we flourish. When we're invisible to those around us, we wither. The art of paying attention to others with generous curiosity and patient understanding transforms not just our relationships, but our entire experience of being alive.
Hard Conversations: Navigating Difference and Division
At a 2022 panel discussion about America's "culture wars," Brooks found himself in conversation with a prominent Black intellectual who had very different perspectives on the conflicts dividing the nation. While Brooks approached the topic from his characteristic thirty-thousand-foot analytical view, seeing multiple sides and historical patterns, she experienced these same conflicts as deeply personal attacks on her community and identity. The conversation grew tense beneath its polite surface. Every time Brooks attempted to provide broader context, his co-panelist would pull a sour face, clearly viewing his detached analysis as evidence of his privilege and disconnection from the real struggles she faced daily. Meanwhile, Brooks felt increasingly anxious, aware that as a white male discussing race with a Black woman scholar, he might not even have the right to opinions on these matters. The emotional undercurrents of their exchange revealed everything wrong with how we typically approach difficult conversations across difference. Both participants brought their full histories into that room—four centuries of American racial dynamics, professional territories to defend, and vastly different lived experiences that shaped how they interpreted the same social phenomena. Hard conversations fail when we insist on yanking others into our frame of reference rather than first entering theirs. Brooks learned that effective dialogue across difference requires what the Scots call stepping into someone's "ken"—their field of vision and understanding. Before we can share our perspective, we must demonstrate genuine curiosity about how the world looks through someone else's eyes. This doesn't mean abandoning our own views, but rather creating space where multiple truths can coexist and where respect flows in all directions, even amid profound disagreement.
Seeing Through Struggles: Empathy in Dark Times
When Peter Marks, Brooks's oldest friend since childhood, fell into severe depression, Brooks discovered how unprepared he was to accompany someone through such darkness. Peter had always been the embodiment of masculine strength and joy—a gifted eye surgeon, devoted father, and loyal friend who could turn eating a burger into a form of play with his elaborate lip-smacking and operatic declarations about the excellence of the cheese. Depression transformed Peter into someone Brooks barely recognized. The light in his eyes dimmed, his voice flattened, and activities that once brought him pure delight became meaningless. Brooks initially made every mistake possible—offering advice about things Peter could do to feel better, reminding him of his many blessings, essentially telling his friend to cheer up when what Peter needed was simply to be seen and accepted in his pain. Over three agonizing years, Brooks learned that his friend's job wasn't to fix Peter but to stay present with him in the darkness. Depression, he discovered, creates an alternate reality where normal logic doesn't apply, where someone can be surrounded by love yet feel utterly alone, where the simple act of showering becomes terrifying. The illness whispered cruel lies to Peter—that he was a burden, that he had no future, that no one would miss him. Despite having access to excellent mental healthcare and the unwavering love of family and friends, Peter ultimately lost his battle with depression. But Brooks learned something profound from those difficult years: sometimes the most important gift we can offer someone isn't solutions or optimism, but simply the courage to remain present in their pain. True empathy doesn't require us to fix others' problems—it asks us to stay close enough to witness their struggle and remind them, through our steady presence, that they're not facing their darkness alone.
Understanding Human Stories: Personality, Culture, and Wisdom
During his research, Brooks spent time with Tracy Kidder as the acclaimed author worked on his book about Deo, a young man who had fled genocide in Burundi and ended up homeless in Central Park. What fascinated Brooks wasn't just Deo's remarkable story of survival and eventual success at Columbia University, but how Kidder had learned to see beyond the surface of someone whose experiences were radically different from his own. Kidder spent two years in patient conversation with Deo, gradually earning his trust and understanding the deeper patterns that shaped his worldview. When they finally traveled together to Burundi to retrace Deo's harrowing journey through genocide, Kidder experienced firsthand the evil atmosphere that still hung over those places. But he also witnessed Deo's extraordinary capacity for forgiveness—returning to help the very communities that had tried to destroy him. This process of truly knowing someone reveals the layers that make each person unique: their personality traits that determine how they show up in the world, their cultural inheritance that provides the deep grammar of meaning-making, and their personal story of how they've transformed suffering into wisdom. Deo carried the stoical culture of Burundi, the trauma of witnessing unthinkable violence, and the remarkable resilience that allowed him to rebuild his life in a foreign land. The most profound relationships emerge when we learn to see these multiple dimensions simultaneously—recognizing both the individual and their context, both their wounds and their strengths. When Kidder looked at Deo, he saw not just a genocide survivor or a brilliant student, but a complete human being whose every gesture carried the weight of history and the lightness of possibility. This kind of seeing requires patience, humility, and the willingness to have our own perspectives expanded by encounters with lives vastly different from our own.
Summary
The art of truly knowing another person emerges not from clever techniques or psychological insights, but from a fundamental shift in how we approach human encounter. When we stop trying to categorize, fix, or impress others and instead learn to accompany them with generous curiosity, we discover that each person carries within themselves entire universes of experience, wisdom, and possibility. This transformation begins with recognizing our own limitations and blind spots, then developing the skills of patient attention that allow others to emerge authentically in our presence. Whether navigating the minefield of difficult conversations across difference, staying present with someone in their darkest moments, or learning to perceive the complex interplay of personality, culture, and story that makes each person irreducibly unique, the path forward requires both courage and humility. The deepest reward of this practice isn't just better relationships—though those surely follow—but the discovery of our own expanded humanity. When we learn to see others with the eyes of compassion, we inevitably become more interesting to ourselves and more useful to the world. In a culture increasingly marked by digital distraction and tribal division, the simple act of truly seeing another human being becomes a radical form of love, a quiet revolution that begins in the space between two people willing to meet each other with open hearts and curious minds.
By David Brooks
