Changing the Way We Look at People

Here’s a true story told by Steven Covey in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effec­tive Peo­ple (p. 30–31). Covey uses this story to illus­trate ‘par­a­digm shift.’ The story illus­trates the way we look at peo­ple, for bet­ter or worse.

Sun­day morn­ing on a sub­way in New York.

Peo­ple were sit­ting qui­etly — some read­ing news­pa­pers, some lost in thought, some rest­ing with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peace­ful scene. Then sud­denly, a man and his chil­dren entered the sub­way car. The chil­dren were so loud and ram­bunc­tious that instantly the whole cli­mate changed.

The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, appar­ently obliv­i­ous to the sit­u­a­tion. The chil­dren were yelling back and forth, throw­ing things, even grab­bing people’s papers. It was very dis­turb­ing. And yet, the man sit­ting next to me did nothing.

It was dif­fi­cult not to feel irri­tated. I could not believe that he could be so insen­si­tive to let his chil­dren run wild like that and do noth­ing about it, tak­ing no respon­si­bil­ity at all. It was easy to see that every­one else on the sub­way felt irri­tated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your chil­dren are really dis­turb­ing a lot of peo­ple. I won­der if you couldn’t con­trol them a lit­tle more?”

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a con­scious­ness of the sit­u­a­tion for the first time and said softly, ‘Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do some­thing about it. We just came from the hos­pi­tal where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to han­dle it either.’

What hap­pens at that instance is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing. You think of the man in a totally dif­fer­ent way. You think of those chil­dren in a more for­giv­ing way. You look beyond your irri­ta­tion, and see real­ity in the lives of other peo­ple. The way you look at peo­ple changes.

Look­ing beyond faces and into lives is some­thing that the fol­low­ing video empha­sizes. (The video is part of the train­ing cur­ricu­lum for Chick-Fil-A employees.)

The way we look at peo­ple is impor­tant. Whether it’s self-centered myopia or judg­men­tal con­de­scen­sion, we some­times do it wrong. As I’ve thought about the way I view peo­ple, these three thoughts helped me:

1. Often, the way I label some­one is blind stereo­typ­ing. A teen. A kid. A woman. An African-American. A His­panic. These labels aren’t inher­ently bad, but they can blind us to the real­ity that this is a per­son, an indi­vid­ual made in the image of God. Peo­ple pos­sess dig­nity and worth. They have a soul. They have strug­gles. They have needs.
2. What I see on the sur­face is not the whole pic­ture. Regard­less of how a per­son looks—successful, home­less, beau­ti­ful, dis­abled, etc.—their lives have a story that their appear­ance can­not totally con­vey. I must learn to look beyond appear­ance, not in a way that jumps to con­clu­sions or forms judg­ments, but in a way that rec­og­nizes per­son­hood and depth.
3. How I look at a per­son will affect how I treat that per­son. Per­haps that is why chang­ing the way we look at peo­ple is so impor­tant. My view of peo­ple shapes how I respond to that per­son, whether in my mind or in my actions toward them. Vision affects behav­ior. Sadly, often my view of peo­ple and the result­ing actions, are not what they should be.

I’m left with this con­clu­sion:  I should look at peo­ple in the way that Jesus looked at peo­ple. That seems to present a bit of a prob­lem how­ever, because I lack omni­science. Jesus knew every detail of every person’s heart and mind. But whether or not I have omni­science is irrel­e­vant to the dis­cus­sion. I don’t need to know that some­one was just diag­nosed with can­cer, or that they recently suf­fered a dev­as­tat­ing finan­cial loss, or are seething with hatred for a spouse. I sim­ply need to be empa­thetic, patient, and will­ing to lis­ten and help.

When Jesus looked at peo­ple, He saw needs. He felt com­pas­sion. He loved. He served. He died. As a fol­lower of Jesus, I am called to the same type of self-denying, others-serving behav­ior, regard­less of what I think of peo­ple, regard­less of how they’ve treated me, and regard­less of what I see or don’t see in their lives. That’s how I want to look at peo­ple — not as a source of per­sonal infringe­ment, not as an annoy­ance, not as a con­sumer — but as a per­son with needs.

We’re called to love, and love has zero qual­i­fi­ca­tions (1 Corinthi­ans 13).