How the Way You Look at Someone Changes Who They Become | David Brooks
- Andy McIlvain
- 1 day ago
- 1 min read
Video from Sounds True
How the Way You Look at Someone Changes Who They Become | David Brooks
"David Brooks explains why the way you look at someone changes who they become, and how to be the kind of person who makes others feel truly seen.
Only about 30% of people, he estimates, are genuine question askers. The rest are what he calls diminishers: uncurious, quick to stereotype, prone to learning one fact about you and inventing the rest. Illuminators do the opposite. They are curious, they listen, and they make you feel lit up. Brooks admits he often fails at this himself, catching himself at parties in what he calls broadcast mode.
Drawing on Simone Weil, who said attention is the ultimate form of generosity, and Iris Murdoch, who urged us to cast a just and loving attention on others instead of looking with self-serving eyes, Brooks shows what that gaze can actually do. In a Waco diner, a pastor grabbed a formidable 93-year-old woman by the shoulders and told her she was the best and that he loved her. In an instant, she became a bright-eyed nine-year-old girl. Even at Bell Labs, the most productive researchers were not the ones with higher IQs. They were the ones who ate lunch with a single engineer who asked them about their work.
He closes with the story of a writer who believed he was incapable of love, until four days in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami showed him what real love looks like, and changed the course of his life." from the video introduction
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