We wish to be known, seen, and heard. We hunger for this, looking for someone who wants to know us. Such a human being sometimes appears to be in short supply.

To fit the role, he must possess a high emotional IQ and be a keen witness of the human condition. Additional qualities include knowledge, dedication, enjoyment of people, and the capacity to concentrate with intensity.

Those who hope to understand you must recognize how their urgency to speak, make an impression, or be understood interferes with fulfilling your desire. If he offers rapid advice, not permitting time to grasp who you are, his delivery of solutions aborts the chance of connection.

One who offers instant advice demonstrates a misunderstanding of his counterpart’s emotional craving. The former’s discomfort, ignorance, naivety, presumption, or impatience leave insufficient room for developing an atmosphere of intimacy.

The door soon closes, and the person hoping for some indication of understanding and acceptance shuts down.

A listener’s accomplishment of that conversational mission requires an act of selflessness. Given that the yearning to be seen is widespread, he puts the other’s needs first in a tender moment. If he and the other find this satisfying, his perceptive compassion becomes a regular part of their relationship, even though it is not the only feature of their togetherness.

An additional complexity, however, is that the one listening might not have been told the other’s goal. Indeed, sometimes, neither party grasps the unstated, unexplained agenda.

Few homo-sapiens declare their wish to be seen as they see themselves, recognized for the catch in their voice, and beheld as if by the comic book character Superman. In addition to a form of X-ray vision, respect must be displayed, no matter what that mock superhero discovers about the speaker’s hidden life.

Nakedness plays a role in this. An auditor who cannot tolerate the conversation partner’s distress tries to give him a quick action plan. The unspoken meaning tells the vulnerable soul to put his clothes back on and cease the unveiling.

An additional challenge for the one who offers benign human contact is to stretch his capacity to grasp another’s sensitivities. He cannot begin to approach the understanding of experiences he has not lived without careful, acute attention, sympathy, and thought. 

To accomplish this, he must envision another life on the fly. Moreover, the glimpse inside that person’s existence should not be considered at an end when the two individuals part.

Parting carries a danger. Comments delivered when saying goodbye leave little chance for clarification. Misunderstandings wait until another interaction occurs — if it does.

Moreover, as Daniel Kaheman’s research on the peak-end rule demonstrates, a person who finds the end painful tends to count his disappointment greater at the end of things than if it happened earlier in their time together.

For the listener to learn more, he must replay and rethink what happened during the entire period spent together. In other words, he takes on a homework assignment, one never assigned.

In an ideal circumstance, the interlocutor who opens himself receives the gift of his opposite’s time, deep focus, and care. Such generosity might, in some instances, be called an act of love.

The person who receives his colleague’s openness benefits from being trusted—no small boon. Gratitude, friendship, and affection frequently follow. Reciprocity, too, but only if the pair can each let go of their inward focus when necessary and gather the signs of meaning in someone else’s voice and body.

To be human means considerable self-preoccupation. In the best moments, however, such a creature embraces his fellow men and women, setting aside the most pressing demands of a busy life and well-practiced, routinized styles of relating.

He chooses to give the other help in getting beyond the psychological fortress he maintains, a defense against the injury members of the race also inflict. 

As in the biblical Battle of Jericho, the walls come tumbling down when this works. But unlike that conflict, the barrier is lowered voluntarily. There is no wartime victory but the triumph of a shared humanity. A transcendent moment.

The listener recognizes that the other — in his frailty and innate value, dreams, and desires — is not so different from himself, no less worthy of kindness and love.

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The two photos above are the lovely work of Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

The first is Sunset on the Canadian Plains in Saskatchewan in August 2023. Beneath it is a Humming Bird in Cuba in 2024.