We scroll past countless faces each day—profile pictures, stories, posts. But how often do we pause to wonder: What would it mean to truly see another person?

To see someone isn't simply to register their appearance. A camera does that. To see is to recognize something beyond the surface—the weight they carry in the slope of their shoulders, the questions hidden behind their eyes, the histories that shaped the way they hold themselves in the world. But our attention has become a scarce resource, rationed in seconds, distributed across hundreds of partial presences.

Consider the last conversation you had. Were you fully present, or was part of you already composing your response, checking the time, cataloging tasks? We've grown accustomed to a fractured attention, a perpetual state of being half-here. And in that fragmentation, people become functions rather than mysteries—the barista who delivers coffee, the colleague who sends reports, the friend who validates our experiences.

Perhaps the deepest ethical challenge of our moment isn't in the grand decisions but in this: Can we resist reducing others to their utility? Can we preserve space for the irreducible strangeness of encountering another consciousness?

There's something almost scandalous about it—to give someone your undivided attention, to let them exist in their fullness rather than in service to your needs. It requires a kind of courage, because truly seeing someone means allowing yourself to be changed by them. You can't predetermine who they are. You have to let them surprise you.

What if the crisis of meaning we sense isn't about lacking purpose, but about lacking presence? What if we're lonely not because we're alone, but because we've forgotten how to witness each other?

The question that remains: Who are you seeing today—and who is seeing you?

#philosophy #presence #attention #humanity