One of life’s greatest gifts is for someone to give us full attention

I don’t even know her name. We might have exchanged a few dozen words over the last five or six weeks. I know nothing about her. Not really.

But something about this woman’s presence — her gaze, her intensity, her confidence — makes me feel as though she sees me. She knows me. She is fully present.

This young woman works at a specialty butcher shop where I’ve started going each Friday to buy beef for weekend grilling. For her, I’m just another customer. But she has a habit — or maybe a talent — that makes her unforgettable to me.

When she looks at me, she is fully present.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this experience ever since I first encountered her. It’s not romantic. It’s not a feeling that I’m special to her. But everything about her presence reminds me of how unusual this behavior is today.

Most people make us feel unseen. They make us feel almost ignored, as though we don’t matter. But this woman somehow knows how to give a stranger a gift.

It’s the gift of being fully seen. She is giving the gift of her full presence.

When I deal with most people today, I feel as though they generally hear only what’s necessary to respond.

They’re only half listening. They’re eager to cut in to change the subject to themselves. Or maybe they’re thinking about something else entirely and they’re not even hearing us.

Many people don’t even look at us. That’s especially true of those we interact with for these routine daily consumer transactions. They go through the motions. They tell us what we owe. They might mechanically tell us to have a good day.

But few of them have engaged us with their conscious minds. They seem like robots following their programming.

The radical difference between my experience with this woman and my experience with most everyone else today has reminded me of how much we need to be seen and known and heard. I’m not talking about something merely for flattery or attention. I think we all want to be known.

It’s made me spend time thinking about times in the past when I’ve felt similarly known and fully seen. In each case that is memorable enough for me to remember, it’s been in a relationship with a woman who loved me deeply.

And even though there is nothing romantic between this woman and me, I’m reminded of how much I crave that feeling of being known and seen and heard. The need is so great that the full attention of a random woman in a store — one who knows how to be present — is one of the most memorable experiences of my week.

Maybe this woman has been taught this skill. Maybe it’s just who she naturally is. I have no idea. I don’t know whether she realizes that she’s different from most people. I don’t know how many of the people around her realize what gift she’s offering.

All I know is that her full presence feels like a gift to me.

And it’s a reminder to me that I need to give the gift of presence to others, too. I need to fully listen to those I’m talking with. I need to hear what they’re saying — and what’s between the lines — and I need to make others feel as though they’re important, at least in the moments when we’re interacting.

It’s also a reminder that the best relationships — romantic or otherwise — involve really knowing another person.

Maybe I’ve felt so surprised by this woman’s presence simply because I haven’t had it in a romantic relationship in a long time — and because I generally feel alone and ignored in crowds today.

Maybe.

All I know for sure is that a woman who could have just as easily had her attention on a smartphone screen or a person miles away has given me a beautiful gift lately.

She’s made me feel seen. Known. Heard.

And I’m more grateful to her for that than she’ll ever know.