David Brooks

Years pass and the deepest parts of yourself go unexplored and unstructured. You are busy, but you have a vague anxiety that your life has not achieved its ultimate meaning and significance. You live with an unconscious boredom, not really loving, not really attached to the moral purposes that give life its worth. You lack the internal criteria to make unshakable commitments.

I was born with a natural disposition toward shallowness. I now work as a pundit and columnist. I’m paid to be a narcissistic blow-hard, to volley my opinions, to appear more confident about them than I really am, to appear smarter than I really am, to appear better and more authoritative than I really am. I have to work harder than most people to avoid a life of smug superficiality.

occurred to me that this shift might symbolize a shift in culture, a shift from a culture of self-effacement that says “Nobody’s better than me, but I’m no better than anyone else” to a culture of self-promotion that says “Recognize my accomplishments, I’m pretty special.”

The ultimate desire is the desire for fusion with a beloved other, for an I–Thou bond, the wholehearted surrender of the whole being, the pure union, the intimacy beyond fear.

When I was young, I wanted to be knowledgeable, but as I got older, I wanted to be wise.

To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.

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.

NAÏVE REALISM. This is the assumption that the way the world appears to you is the objective view, and therefore everyone else must see the same reality you do. People in the grip of naïve realism are so locked into their own perspective, they can’t appreciate that other people have very different perspectives.

You can be loved by a person yet not be known by them.