1: Some people are natural illuminators, David Brooks writes in his book How to Know Another Person.
Illuminators “have a persistent curiosity about other people,” David writes. “They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others.”
They ask the right question at the right time. “They shine the brightness of their care on people and make they fell bigger, deeper, respected, lit up,” he notes.
Exhibit one: A biographer of the novelist E. M. Forster wrote, “To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to your most honest, sharpest, and best self.”
Exhibit two: When she was young, Jennie Jerome, who would later become Winston Churchill‘s mother, once had dinner with the British statesman William Gladstone.
Afterward, she thought “he was the cleverest person in England,” David writes.
Subsequently, she dined with Gladstone’s great rival, Benjamin Disraeli. After their dinner together, she left thinking she was the cleverest person in England.
“It’s nice to be like Gladstone,” David notes, “but it’s better to be like Disraeli,”
2: Diminishers, on the other hand, make people feel small. “They see other people as things to be used, not as persons to be befriended,” David notes.
“They stereotype and ignore. They are so involved with themselves that other people are just not on their radar screen.”
To avoid showing up as a Diminisher, we must be on guard against certain attitudes and behaviors.
Trait #1: Egotism: “The number one reason people don’t see others is that they are too self-centered to try,” David writes. “I can’t see you because I’m all about myself. Let me tell you my opinion. Let me entertain you with this story about myself.”
Beware of getting trapped in our own point of view and failing to be curious about what others think and feel.
Trait #2: Anxiety: It’s difficult to see or hear someone else if we have too much noise in our heads. “How am I coming across?” we worry. “I don’t think this person really likes me. What am I going to say next to appear clever? Fear is the enemy of open communication.”
Trait #3: Objectivism: “This is what market researchers, pollsters, and social scientists do,” David notes. “They observe behavior, design surveys, and collect data on people. This is a great way to understand the trends among populations of people, but it’s a terrible way to see an individual person.”
When we take on a detached, dispassionate point of view, we can miss out on who that person really is–their imagination, sentiments, desires, creativity, intuitions, faith, and emotions.
If we “want to understand humanity,” David observes, “we have to focus on the thoughts and emotions of individuals, not just data about groups.”
Trait #4: Essentialism. Yes, we all belong to groups. But we are wise to avoid making generalizations, like: “Germans are orderly, Californians are laid-back,” David writes. “These generalizations occasionally have some basis in reality. But they are all false to some degree, and they are all hurtful to some degree. . .
“Essentialists are quick to use stereotypes to categorize vast swaths of people. . . They imagine that people in other groups are more different from ‘us’ than they really are.
“Essentialists are guilty of ‘stacking,’ he observes. “This is the practice of learning one thing about a person, then making a whole series of further assumptions about that person. If this person supported Donald Trump, then this person must also be like this, this, this, and this.”
Trait #5: The Static Mindset: People change. People change profoundly. What is true of someone today is not always true tomorrow, next year, or ten years from now.
3: David’s bigger point?
“Seeing another person well is the hardest of all hard problems. Each person is a fathomless mystery, and we have only an outside view of who they are.
“Being an Illuminator, seeing other people in all their fullness, doesn’t just happen. It’s a craft, a set of skills, a way of life.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Are there any Diminisher traits I fall into?
Action: Decide today that I will show up as an Illuminator. Journal about the experience at the end of the day.
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