Notes On Discernment & Character (something I've been thinking about)
Lately I've been thinking about people—their motivations, how we read them, what they do and don't do, what they say and leave unsaid. I don't have a finished theory, but I'm noticing patterns worth exploring.
Careful observation gives you evidence of capacity and pattern. What someone can actually sustain in the real world. Careful listening gives you access to their consciousness, to what they pay attention to, value, and believe about themselves and the world around them. Watch long enough and you see who they are. Listen long enough and you hear the story they're living inside.
Integrity, aspiration, delusion, and hypocrisy all live in the gap between these. The wise move isn't to judge the gap immediately—it's to track what happens with it.
- Does it narrow? That's growth.
- Does it widen? That's self-deception.
- Does it remain steady? That's self-awareness.
- Do they weaponize it? That's deceit or manipulation.
There's a broad spectrum between authenticity and performance in what people do and say—and in what they don't. Few of us watch closely enough to notice what people actually do, fewer still listen carefully enough to what they say, and almost none of us grasp how much of a person's reality lives in the gap between the two.
We assume we know people because we can see their surfaces. But discernment requires both attention and patience. Watching over time, listening for what's unsaid, noticing when actions and words pull in different directions. Without that, we mistake performance for authenticity, fragments for the whole, and rehearsed lines for actual thought.
The space between action and speech is where people reveal themselves—but most don't know to look there.
What People DO (analyzing actions)
It's tempting to think we know someone just by knowing them. We don't, and won't, until we learn to navigate the difference between doing and performing. People don't just perform—they stage. They polish, manage, and arrange so what others see tells the story they want believed. These are signals designed to manage perception, and gestures meant to be noticed.
But action has layers most people never think to parse:
- Real doing is what someone does when no one's watching.
- Neglect (or blind omission) is what people never register as theirs to do; it's not deceit, just absence of awareness.
- Performing (or signaling) ) is what someone does to be seen; it's action that mimics sincerity and requires an audience.
- Avoidance (or non-action) is what people consciously choose not to do; what they defer, evade, or deliberately leave out.
Discerning another person's actions begins with knowing which layer you're seeing. Performance seeks an audience. Action doesn't. Real doing leaves real residue—friction, fatigue, results. Performance just leaves polish.
What People SAY (analyzing words)
What people say, leave unsaid, or carefully avoid saying reveals what they believe. Silence and omission can be accidental. Avoidance is deliberate—it exposes what someone can't face, doesn't value enough to name, or hopes you won't notice.
Discerning words means listening for all three: what's said, left unsaid, purposely not said. It's important to listen even more carefully than you watch. Words build narratives. Silence marks limits. Avoidance exposes fear.
Truth Lives In The Gaps Between
Actions show what a person can sustain.
Words show what a person believes and aspires to.
The gap between the two shows who they're becoming or pretending to become.
- When the gap widens, you're seeing illusion.
- When it narrows, you're seeing growth and learning.
- When it stays constant, you're seeing self-awareness.
Discernment is tracking that movement over time, curiously, patiently, without rushing to judgment.
A Field Test For Discernment
- Give weight to patterns over moments. Repetition reveals truth. One-offs mislead.
- Value what costs them something. Effort without applause counts more than display.
- Mirror the gap back to them. "I'm hearing X, I'm seeing Y. Something's missing. What is it?"
- Timebox trust. Go slow. Start small. Watch and listen carefully. Observe outcomes. Adjust accordingly.
Why Any Of This Matters
Character isn't what people do or say. It's the degree to which what they do and say stay aligned when no one's watching, when they have nothing to gain. So watch the walk, listen to the talk, and pay exquisite attention to the distance between them. Why? Because that distance is the measure of a life.
People's words reveal their beliefs. Their actions show their capacity. The space between the two exposes their character.
I’m not sure where this theory goes from here, but I can say what keeps resonating. A sense that the work has less to do with sharpening opinions and more to do with giving things a little more time before deciding what they mean. Letting moments land before turning them into explanations that make me feel conversant, competent, or settled.
The world doesn’t reward that kind of patience. Everything moves fast. Signals stack up. Performance crowds out texture. It’s easier to grab the first tidy story and keep moving. I do that more than I’d like to admit. But when I slow down enough to really look, things stop lining up so neatly. People don’t stay in their assigned roles. Motives overlap. Edges blur. I don’t come away feeling enlightened. I come away more aware of how partial my view is, and how much care it takes to move through other people’s lives without flattening them.
In a world engineered for signal, built on performance, obfuscated by noise, blurred by speed, and dimmed by distraction, that kind of seeing feels out of step. It asks more time than we care to give. It leaves less certainty than we’re used to carrying. It doesn’t offer easy villains or easy virtue. Instead, what it offers is exposure to complexity, to limits, to the fact that most things worth understanding don’t resolve cleanly.
That doesn’t hand me answers. It leaves me more measured. More aware of what I might be missing. And for now, that feels like a better place to stand.