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One day, not long ago, I was reading a dull book at my dining room table when I looked up and saw my wife framed in the front doorway of our house. The door was open. The late afternoon light was streaming in around her. Her mind was elsewhere, but her gaze was resting on a white orchid that we kept in a pot on a table by the door.

I paused, and looked at her with a special attention, and had a strange and wonderful awareness ripple across my mind: "I know her," I thought. "I really know her, through and through."

If you had asked what it was exactly that I knew about her in that moment, I would have had trouble answering. It wasn't any collection of facts about her, or her life story, or even something expressible in the words I'd use to describe her to a stranger. It was the whole flowing of her being—the incandescence of her smile, the undercurrent of her insecurities, the rare flashes of fierceness, the vibrancy of her spirit. It was the lifts and harmonies of her music. 

I wasn't seeing pieces of her or having specific memories. What I saw, or felt I saw, was the wholeness of her. How her consciousness creates her reality. It's what happens when you've been with someone for a while, endured and delighted together, and slowly grown an intuitive sense for how that person feels and responds. It might even be accurate to say that for a magical moment I wasn't seeing her, I was seeing out from her. Perhaps to really know another person, you have to have a glimmer of how they experience the world. To really know someone, you have to know how they know you. 

The only word I can think of in the English language that captures my mental processes at that instant is "beholding." She was at the door, the light blazing in behind her, and I was beholding her. They say there is no such thing as an ordinary person. When you're beholding someone, you're seeing the richness of this particular human consciousness, the full symphony—how they perceive and create their life. 

I don't have to tell you how delicious that moment felt—warm, intimate, profound. It was the bliss of human connection. "A lot of brilliant writers and thinkers don't have any sense for how people operate," the therapist and author Mary Pipher once told me. "To be able to understand people and be present for them in their experience—that's the most important thing in the world."

CHAPTER TWO 

How Not to See a Person 

A few years ago, I was sitting at a bar near my home in Washington, D.C. If you'd been there that evening, you might have looked at me and thought, "Sad guy drinking alone." I would call it "diligent scholar reporting on the human condition." I was nursing my bourbon, checking out the people around me. Because the bar was in D.C., there were three guys at a table behind me talking about elections and swing states. The man with his laptop at the table next to them looked like a junior IT officer who worked for a defense contractor. He had apparently acquired his wardrobe from the garage sale after the filming of Napoleon Dynamite. Down the bar there was a couple gazing deeply into their phones. Right next to me was a couple apparently on a first date, with the guy droning on about himself while staring at a spot on the wall about six feet over his date's head. As his monologue hit its tenth minute, I sensed that she was silently praying that she might spontaneously combust, so at least this date could be over. I felt the sudden urge to grab the guy by the nose and scream, "For the love of God—just once ask her a question!" I think this impulse of mine was justified, but I'm not proud of it. 

In short, everybody had their eyes open, and nobody seemed to be seeing each other. We were all, in one way or another, acting like Diminishers. And in truth, I was the worst of them, because I was doing that thing I do: the size-up. The size-up is what you do when you first meet someone: You check out their look, and you immediately start making judgments about them. I was studying the bartender's Chinese-character tattoos and drawing all sorts of conclusions about her sad singer/indie rock musical tastes. I used to make a living doing this. Just over two decades ago I wrote a book called Bobos in Paradise. Doing research for that book, I followed people around places like the clothing and furniture store Anthropologie, watching them thumb through nubby Peruvian shawls. I'd case people's kitchens, checking out the Aga stove that looked like a nickel-plated nuclear reactor right next to their massive Sub-Zero fridge, because apparently mere zero wasn't cold enough for them. I'd make some generalizations and riff on the cultural trends. 

I'm proud of that book. But now I'm after bigger game. I'm bored with making generalizations about groups. I want to see people deeply, one by one. You'd think this would be kind of easy. You open your eyes, direct your gaze, and see them. But most of us have all sorts of inborn proclivities that prevent us from perceiving others accurately. The tendency to do the instant size-up is just one of the Diminisher tricks. Here are a few others:

EGOTISM. The number one reason people don't see others is that they are too self-centered to try. 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. Many people are unable to step outside of their own points of view. They are simply not curious about other people. 

ANXIETY. The number two reason people don't see others is that they have so much noise in their own heads, they can't hear what's going on in other heads. How am I coming across? 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.