First of all, I know some of y’all probably don’t like NYT columnist David Brooks. I’m just guessing there is some overlap between this group and the comments section of his editorials. And I certainly don’t always agree with his views or approach. His “Can you believe the price of bourbon these days” tweet was so ridiculous, I put his (deceptively edited) apology for it in my latest Bulwark parody (I do credit him for his apology and humility). Enjoy.
But his latest book is a humble, insightful, and practical exploration of pretty much the most important thing any of us can do in life, connect with another person on a deep level. Just this week, in fact, I was in a wellness seminar, and one of the speakers, a trauma therapist, told us that “healing happens through connection.” I believe that.
Before I get to my overall takeaway from the book on why connection matters, a few lessons I picked up that I want to apply:
Be an Illuminator. Brooks writes, “Illuminators..have a persistent curiosity about other people…They know what to look for and how to ask the right questions at the right time. They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, deeper, respected, lit up.” In other words, Illuminators recognize others’ strengths and unique gifts—sometimes they help them discover those for the first time—and empower and encourage their deployment. Who wouldn’t want to be the person that helps others become their best selves? So, next time you interact with someone, pretend you are an investigative journalist tasked with unearthing the best thing about the person in front of you.
Accompany people, don’t stage manage them. Granted, some relationships (parenting) require applying more direction. But even with kids, I think it’s better to support and foster them in their growth, to help them come into their own and become more of themselves. “Let others voluntarily evolve…trust is built when individual differences are appreciated, when mistakes are tolerated, and when one person says… ‘I’ll be there when you want me. I’ll be there when the time is right.’” This is kind of what I already do, mainly because I am too lazy to try to control other people. But what he’s talking about is a more intentional, thoughtful nurturing through relationship and presence rather than just taking a nap in the corner.
He talks about walking with his best friend through debilitating depression to which his friend sadly succumbed. His instinct—and most of ours—is to find and offer solutions, cures, things that will help. While this is well-intentioned, it communicates a lack of understanding for the other person’s experience. If we’re honest with ourselves, we might recognize in the instinct to fix and “enlighten” others an attempt to make ourselves more comfortable with life as it is—we want to believe all problems can be solved, there are answers to every question, and there are bright sides and happy endings to all pain. But deep down, we know that isn’t true. The best thing we can do for a hurting person is to just be with them in their distress, to validate it and tell them they are not alone.
In conversation, help people write their stories. When most people tell their stories, they are self-conscious about going on too long, including too much detail, figuring you won’t care. But if you ask them specific questions—“Where was your boss sitting when he said that? And what did you say in response?”—not only will it show them you care, not only will you become more engaged in their story, you may lead them down a path that will bring them more self-discovery. It’s a great way to be an Illuminator.
Find the disagreement under the disagreement. In conflicts, you probably aren’t going to convince anyone through salient logic and deft argument, so instead, find out why you disagree. Relatedly, keep going deeper until you find some agreement. I find this is tough these days, because so many disagreements in my mind reach down to the the level of fundamental values and the veracity of proven facts. Still, perhaps we might find similar motives, if we give people the benefit of the doubt. I think many (definitely not all) ordinary Trump supporters, for instance, earnestly want to do what they think is best for America, just like Trump opponents. That’s not going to solve the problem of their self-deception, but it may at least help you see them in a different light.
On the topic of conflict, a big problem for me is that my “fight-or-flight” instinct is easily triggered (for most of us, the sensitivity of this a genetic/biological thing), so I am not good at navigating conflict or listening well to someone with whom I disagree. Brooks talks a bit about this, but I was also in a class recently that dealt with conflict, and the key is to shift from that survivalist area of the brain into the analytic brain. You can do this through active listening strategies. I find taking notes/writing down what the other person is saying is helpful.
But I think it’s also OK to recognize that there are some conflicts with some people that are not worth entering into. Perhaps there is too much water under the bridge, too much baggage, too little room for objectivity, too little chance for any kind of agreement. I think it’s fine to simply say, “Arguing is not how I want to spend my time with you, it is not going to bring any benefit for our relationship. I’m not going to participate.”
Don’t be a Topper. This was an a-ha moment for me. When someone tells me a problem, my instinct is to find and relate some commonality— i.e. “I, too, have a neurotic rescue dog who eats his own poop.” Brooks explains, “You may think you’re trying to build a shared connection, but what you are really doing is shifting attention back to yourself [and your neurotic, poopy rescue dog].”
Risk a little “prying.” Being an insufferable extrovert, I didn’t need Brooks’s encouragement to start conversations with strangers (he presents research that even introverts underestimate how much they will enjoy such interactions). But I did need a nudge on asking people deeper questions about themselves, beyond, Where are you from, What do you do, etc etc. It turns out most people love the opportunity to tell more meaningful stories. “People are eager, often desperate, to be seen, heard, and understood. And yet we have built a culture, and a set of manners, in which that doesn’t happen,” he writes. He offers some questions you might ask of someone as you are getting to know them— “How did you come to believe X?”, “Tell me about the person who shaped your values most,” “What’s the place you spiritually never leave? How do the dead show up in your life? How do I see you embracing or rejecting your culture?”
The book is packed with practical ideas and tips for deepening your connections with other people, but these are a few things that stayed with me.
Of course, after reading this book, I went on to have multiple interactions in which I tried and failed to put it into practice, mainly out of my almost frantic need to fill silence with chatter. Aaron Burr may just have to shoot me, too, to get me to shut up.
Now, bigger picture—why do all this? Perhaps you are introverted and self-sufficient. You feel you have enough human connection in your life, and you don’t need more. Why make the effort?
The answer is much more profound than any direct or practical benefit for individuals or societies, although those are there. Brooks draws a line between our inability to connect with others and some of our social problems, although he concedes that this isn’t the sole cause of our current struggles as a society. “When people feel unseen, they tend to shut down socially. People who are lonely and unseen become suspicious. They start to take offense where none is intended. They become afraid of the very thing they need most, which is intimate contact with other,” he writes.
But what I kept coming back to over and over, is that human connection is the essence and truest expression of love, and love is the force, the energy, the driver that has pushed our species forward over many thousands of years, what has caused us to evolve and progress and create and invent and heal and correct.
Connection is what makes us more than just another animal species propelled by the survival instinct. Connection, empathy, and cooperation has allowed us to pool our knowledge and efforts to overcome problems and end wars and create systems of government that provide stability and build societies in which more people can thrive.
And despite our continued social challenges—to include loneliness and anomie, inequality and bigotry—in broad strokes, more and more people—no matter their race, gender identity, religion, sexuality, mental or physical ability or health—are being seen, heard, supported, protected, and recognized as individuals. We are also better able to recognize how not seeing others as human beings and not allowing for their differing experiences causes immense destruction and violence.
Love really does make the world go round. Love is what has bent the moral arc of the universe toward justice. God is love. God may or may not be something more or more specific than that, but I’m starting to believe he/she/they may not be. I’m starting to believe that God is very literally love. Full stop.
Brooks cites philosopher and novelist Irish Murdoch as saying, “Love is knowledge of the individual.” And the ultimate immorality is failing to see others fully or accurately. That’s really the crux of things, isn’t it?
I know I’m a broken record, but reading this book reminded me again—for the 1000th time—just how little my religious upbringing actually taught me about love. And how easily religious faith in general can, with such wonderful intentions, miss the entire point of this life and who and what God is. My faith tradition was ostensibly about experiencing God’s love and passing it on to others. But it was so fixated on correct belief and using that to define and police boundaries between people and communities and to convince self and others of our rightness—this was all we could see when we gazed at another human being. Difference of perspective was a problem to be corrected. Another person’s experience wasn’t valuable unless it proved an already established point of view (and when it challenged that point of view, experience was a threat). Seeing another person deeply became a device for changing and controlling them. I remember learning about other religions not out of curiosity or to see what we might learn from them or what was lovely about them but so that we could more easily convert their believers to our religion. What a missed opportunity. What a failure to love.
I can’t speak for everyone within the culture of American evangelicalism, but when I was in that world, my ability to know and connect with other people on a deep level—my ability to love them—was compromised and stunted. Other people’s light reached me through a distorting prism of rigid belief. My light reached others through the same. I’ve said before it felt like trying to hug someone wearing one of those sumo wrestler costumes.
The world in which I grew up demanded and celebrated grand gestures of service and devotion—that’s why my parents became missionaries. But what Brooks argues, and what I’ve found in my own life, is that true love and real character—the purest experience of the divine—is found in approaching another person without agenda, without assumption, without judgment, and simply wanting to understand, see, hear, and know them. And skillfully and carefully doing that changes lives. In the collective, it changes the world.
Brooks concludes, “It’s not only the epic acts of heroism and altruism that define a person’s character; it’s the everyday acts of encounter. It is the simple capacity to make another person feel seen and understood—that hard but essential skill that makes a person a treasured co-worker, citizen, lover, spouse, and friend.”
There’s no better thing you can be than that. That’s the whole point.
A few closing things:
Tatiana and Sergei arrive on Tuesday! We have raised over $6,000 so far to help get them started and have found them an apartment. Thank you so much to all those who have given. You can still donate if you haven’t yet. I’m excited to meet them and will be trying (and probably failing!) to put into practice what I’ve been learning about connection. Every human encounter is an opportunity to grow and do better!
Some of you are familiar with David and Nancy French and know that Nancy is seriously ill with cancer. She also has a memoir coming out that I’m excited to read. She has asked those who want to buy her book to purchase it from a bookstore owned by a friend who has helped the French family in many ways through Nancy’s illness.
Some of you are also familiar with David Frum and know he and his lovely wife, Danielle, lost their beautiful daughter Miranda recently. His essay (that link is a gift article so I hope you can access it) about Miranda and the little dog she left behind is one of the best things I’ve read lately. Please hold the Frums close in your hearts.
Thank you as always, friends, for seeing me, hearing me, and knowing me by reading my work. You have changed my life in a meaningful way. I regret this isn’t a great format for a two-way relationship, but my prayer for each of you is that you have people in your lives who do for you what you have done for me.
I recently read Frum’s Atlantic piece. It is heartbreaking. Thank you for what you do, Holly. You have become one of my favorites on Substack.
I've loved that Camus quote since I was a teen, oh, forever years ago. I do find your writing to be thoughtful and compelling. I'm not at all religious, but I respect people like you whose beliefs have not been transmogrified into hate and exclusion. I think love is what its all about. I find many people hard to love these days, but I still think that is the answer.