I recently posed the following question to a group of teens participating in People Change People’s The 6Teens Project: “How would you like adults to respond when you make a poor decision?” One student, whom I’ll call Heather, answered, “We don’t want them to think this one choice is who we are.” For example, if she cut class, she would like her teacher to not view her as Heather: the girl that cuts class.

Heather made a great point. We ought not to define a person by one decision. Such a narrow focus will overlook valuable aspects of Heather’s character, such as how she responds to her poor choice and the corresponding consequences. Our scope of inspection needs to be broader. We would be foolish to attempt to understand a novel by reading only the first sentence of each chapter. (I tried that in middle school. My grade on the quiz corresponded directly to my knowledge, or lack thereof.)

People are like books: between two covers a reader finds conflict, success, failure, and beauty. Our reading literacy, as I mentioned in May’s newsletter, is a gauge of our ability to plumb the depths of a book and comprehend the complexity of plot, character development, argument, and intent. Doing so requires that we develop more than merely our ability to read words. Likewise, the ability to read people—what I call Relational Literacy—requires comparable, if not superior skills. Relational Literacy is the measure of our capacity to truly understand and connect with another person.

Relational Literacy requires two indispensable elements:

1. A desire to learn. We welcome surprising twists and turns in a good book. We ought to do the same with people.

2. Understanding finite events in their larger context. Hold loosely to the actions of another as you would the cryptic lines of a poem. We gain clarity only by reading and rereading the lines with a tenacity to understand.

Developing our Relational Literacy helps us better understand people; their successes, failures, joys, and sorrows. It is true that our choices are in many respects the ink we use to write our life’s story. But we need to patiently let the plot unfold in others. We do well to extend the same patience and empathy to our own life story.