Human Beings are a work in progress that mistakenly think they are finished

- Daniel Gilbert

Introduction

This article involves a bit of wordplay, but I believe that the ideas I'm getting at are truly distinct.

There is a kind of knowledge that we can have about the various individuals we share our time with. I can know facts about my brother; what he usually likes to eat, where he spends his weekends, what his favorite music is...

There is another kind of knowing, that which cannot be expressed succinctly into the written word. I know this man, and this knowing changes, but to remain with eyes open, is to continue to know.

There's a difference between listening to understand, and listening to retort. I think this is a similar distinction involving the quality of the attention we pay to that unique spirit that bears themselves in front of us.

Why is it that we begin to put our spouses, friends, and family into boxes? What I mean is, why do we put labels on them, keep a box of all the propositions that contain the facts about them, and believe that is knowing?

Is it something that happens over time? I believe this answer is yes. It's the same reason we forget to look at the clouds, or gaze off at some beautiful hillside.

Hedonic Adaptation... in other words, we begin to think that we've seen it all before and there is nothing new to see.

Hedonic Adaptation

It is the nature of human mind to become adapted to a level of happiness. This has been shown in research by Daniel Gilbert and others which has been written into this wonderful book.

We adapt to changes too, and things that we think will make us happy don't make us as happy as we thought. The positive aspect is that things we think will be absolutely earth-shattering, tend to be less bad than that armageddon scenario we've crafted in our heads.

Maybe that's what happens with our loved ones too. We see them all the time, and things get stale. We begin to think that our nights out to the same ol' same ol' places are "just like last time."

I get it. Things get old. We love novelty, even the most introverted of us. So what can we do?

1. Recognize that every moment has a new flavor to it. There is truly nothing repeated, and as banal as this sounds, every particle is moving and changing, so what feels like the same scenario as last week is in fact unique. You may be tempted to say that "if every moment is unique, none of them are." I hate to break it you, Syndrome isn't right about that one (if you know, you know). All things can be unique, and in that way they are all special. We can conjure up this sense of wonder in ourselves that morphs our sense of the world back to gratitude.

2. Memento Mori. Sometimes I do what is known as Negative Visualization. I'll listen to the audio guide by William Irvine, a great teacher of stoicism. This meditation, among others, serves to remind me of how fleeting and fragile the moment is. In a natural way, this visualization serves to bring me a sense of oneness with the moment, and gratitude again.

Understanding

To be understood is to be leveled down
And to be grasped is to reach one's fullness
and like a ripe fruit, be plucked

- from Defeat by Khalil Gibran

I included the quote above because it is often the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the ever-so-common phrase, "I understand." From my brief stint reading his work I've noticed a recurring theme with the author, Khalil Gibran. There is much in his work that details unspoken parts of the soul, and the truth that a person cannot express. Take for instance this quote here

• “The Reality of The Other Person Lies Not In What He Reveals To You, But What He Cannot Reveal To You. Therefore, If You Would Understand Him, Listen Not To What He Says, But Rather To What He Does Not Say.”

This touches on a deep philosophical problem, namely, how can we put to words our experiences in such a way that the other individual can receive them in the way we meant them. This is the problem of language. In any conversation between people, there are at least two minds, and in turn, two deeply rich and multidimensional inner worlds that even the individual cannot fully inhabit with their given attention.

This may sound a bit woo-woo, but it more eloquently captures the ideas here. Also, take a look at that sentence I just wrote... "captures" is the key word. That's what words do. They are little packets of ideas that we attempt to fit the world into so we can communicate with other beings that also inhabit and make this world we're in. When we're in a relationship of any kind, language is often one of our prime modes of communication. We know facts about our partner, and when a person expresses something to us, we reply that we understand. Why do so many people feel so lonely then?

A different kind of knowing

I go back and forth on this sort of thing all the time. It's difficult to put a blame label on something with respect to loneliness.

Are we causing ourselves to be lonely?
Is it our inability to connect with the moment?
Maybe it's the world, social media, and things like ATMs that have decreased the level of human interaction we have each week.
I don't know the answer, but some other wise folks might.

The Reasons Matter

Being a fan of logic and finding Calculus "kind of cool" has somehow branded me as the resident "math person" among my family and close friends. In addition to this distinction, I've also been granted the title of an "overthinker," and I tend to be in problem-solving or analysis mode most of the day. While I set aside time to meditate, or just gaze outside at the clouds and listen to TOOL, my average brain state retains the lens of logic.

With that being said, it can be difficult to remember at times that the words other say to me, aren't as important as the reasons why, and the conversations I have with those close to me don't require me to fix anything.

Maybe you've experienced this as well, where you find yourself dissecting conversations and predicting outcomes of what you've considered saying but haven't said yet to decide whether this is a path you'd like to go down. Maybe you've been told by your partner, "I don't want you to solve it, I just want you to listen." I have, many times, and this led me to the book below.

David Brooks, in his book How to Know a Person, outlines a number of stories whose morals seek to convey the answer to the question posed in the title. He explains how a person can be an Illuminator, someone who "offers a gaze that says, 'I want to get to know you and be known by you.' It’s a gaze that positively answers the question everybody is unconsciously asking themselves when they meet you: 'Am I a person to you? Do you care about me? Am I a priority for you?' The answers to those questions are conveyed in your gaze before they are conveyed by your words. It’s a gaze that radiates respect."

To Brooks, an Illuminator has that quality of attention that I mentioned before, where one deeply sees that person before them for something unique, and recognizes them.

When I first listened to Brooks' audiobook in early January, I was caught between a mix of . I was hit by waves of emotion each story I read through, and I would try to carry this over into my relationships. As I began to listen intently, I felt different. Switching from a mind hell-bent on problem solving, to a mind that can treat the conversation as meaningful in its own right is equivalent to changing the frames in lenses, but on a multidimensional level. If you can be curious, you can know a person. It is the curiosity and the recognition of an individual as unique, that opens you up to connection.

Treat the conversation as the end, not the outcomes of it.

Treat the person as the important part, not future prospects.

This isn't my idea. The author Mark Manson has expressed similar views in a number of his articles. We aren't going to get into specifics, but rather we're giving credit where it is due.

So, how do I know that I know

When you're treating the moment as itself, and you're there with someone, but not taking their words to be them, you might be knowing them. Why'd I say might? Why use a qualifier like that here, when we're the ones laying out the argument and claiming that certain attention will lead to knowing of a person?

Because I'm not sure that it will. In case you haven't noticed, this article is in the section on People, and as we've heard before people are "deeply rich and multidimensional inner worlds that even the individual cannot fully inhabit with their given attention."

Socrates told us to know ourselves. That's where knowledge begins.

Alan Watts spoke of human creating the world just as the world creates human, like a great game of tug-o-war.

I don't mean to dump quotes upon you, but these aren't our ideas alone.

Albert Camus explained in his Myth of Sisyphus that "It is probably true that a man remains forever unknown to us and that there is in him something irreducible that escapes us." This, I take to be true. In a single day, a person can many persons within themselves, and even as the cycle of the sun dictates their mood, the way the world is slanted shifts.

So can we ever know a person?

In that moment, when we open ourselves up to curiosity, acknowledge the ever-changing nature of things, and treat the instant as everything, yes.