You don't see people. You see symbols.

Symbols of power, wealth, fame, sex. Or more personal ones—someone who's "got it figured out," someone who represents freedom, someone who embodies everything you find unpleasant. Our brains compress complex human beings into digestible ideas. It's not malicious. It's just how we cope with the overwhelming amount of information that is another person.

Everyone you know is a compression.

You may love someone. Idealize them. But then their flaws come out. What happens to that idealization? Are they still the symbol of love to you?

Confusing. Blurry. Hard to reconcile.

the parent symbol

Think about your parents.

This is one of the strongest symbols most of us carry. A parent is an idealized figure at first—they could do no wrong, they know better, they love you unconditionally. But as you become an adult, you start to see their flaws. They certainly don't know everything. Perhaps they know less than you. They operate in ways you would never choose to operate.

We can drop this symbol and see them as fuller humans. Let go of certain trappings that seeing them as godlike figures would trap us into.

Psychologists might call this "role-based relating"—when we see somebody as representing a concept or quality. In the case of parents: someone who cannot be wrong, or someone who owes us something by virtue of their role. And when they fail to deliver? They become symbols of how we've been wronged by this world.

Positive or negative, harmful or healthy—the mechanism is the same. The person in front of you isn't a person—not fully. They're an idea your brain made up.

At least, that's the default.

from the other side

The rich and famous talk about this too—how they're no longer seen as people.

Strangers approach them already knowing so much. They're calcified in someone's mind before the conversation even begins. They can't break through that. They can't be anything other than the idea someone already has of them.

Confined to a symbol, even though they're so much more.

the mechanical monkey

A psychologist friend once told me this story.

When he was young, he went to a carnival and saw a mechanical monkey figure—one of those animatronic things meant to be spooky for children. And to him at the time, it was absolutely terrifying. He hid behind his mother, refusing to look at this mechanical thing moving and making noises.

Years later, older now, he went back to that same carnival in his hometown. He saw the same figure. And it was this raggedy, haggard thing. Not scary at all. Almost stupid. Harmless. It could do nothing to him.

He related this to how we see people—especially parents or authority figures. At one point, they seem so powerful. So scary. That symbol transfers into adulthood. But when we finally see them for what they actually are, they're not this scary thing. They're just a human. Something much less powerful than we gave them credit for.

the invitation

This is the power of stripping symbols.

Not trying to see the totality of every person—that's impossible. But developing consciousness of how we symbolize one another, how we turn each other into discrete identities.

For those symbols that harm us—someone we feel resentful towards, frustrated about, wronged by—we can recognize that we've turned them into a symbol. And we can choose to drop it. De-energize the figure. See them as something other than this charged idea.

And maybe imbue different symbols onto them. Ones we want to hold. Someone we want to love. Someone we want to care for. Whatever it may be.

Being at choice with what symbols we assign is a powerful way to steward our own lives. So next time you feel that charge—resentment, awe, fear—ask yourself: is this a person, or a symbol?

And if it's a symbol, do you still want to carry it?