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.