Seeing our Humanity
“When you experience the tenderness of imagining yourself into another’s life”
One of the greatest gifts of the imagination is the capacity to wonder. This is what makes storytelling so powerful. We see ourselves in the stories of others. When we wonder about another person, we empathize with them. We imagine them. We live into their experience. They no longer stay as anonymous faces in the background of our life. Once we wonder about someone, we begin to understand and invest in them. It becomes harder to hold on to resentment when you are able to truly see another human being and their full, complex self.
Growing up, I often heard the word personalism emphasized by my family and culture. Personalism, in a spiritual context, means to see God as a person whom we are meant to develop a loving relationship towards. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to see how personalism exists in many other contexts as well.
To be a personalist is to see, honor, and celebrate the person behind everything in this world.
But I’ve also seen how our society so easily gravitates towards impersonalism. We rarely get to know the person who delivers our mail, packs our groceries, or makes our coffee. We live behind our screens and automate every action. What is most frightening is that impersonalism quickly can lead down the dangerous path of dehumanization.
Dehumanization is the opposite of empathy and personalism: it takes away the humanity of another.
When we use language and images to remove the humanity of another person, it becomes so easy to cause harm. Brené Brown unpacks the dangers of dehumanization further, “We are edging closer and closer to a world where political and ideological discourse is basically defined as an exercise in dehumanization… when we engage in dehumanizing rhetoric or promote dehumanizing images, we diminish our own humanity in the process.”
To cultivate the capacity to wonder and humanize another person is not just an exercise in our imagination… it becomes a necessity for survival.
When we can see our shared essence and recognize how each person is as vividly complex as ourselves, we begin to move closer to each other, not apart. We collectively heal, rather than harm.
It can begin with the smallest acts of noticing and appreciating the anonymous faces in our life. To approach those we don’t understand with curiosity. To suspend judgement and try to see the similarities with others. And to ultimately honor the humanity of each person that is so sacred.
When we can see our shared essence and recognize how each person is as vividly complex as ourselves, we begin to move closer to each other, not apart.
“Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’”
12 truths I learned from life and writing
Anne Lamott shares the 12 truths she's learnt in her life and dives into the nuances of what it means to be human. She offers her life-affirming wisdom and humor on family, writing, the meaning of God, death and more.