They Looked Different

What an adoption story and an unexpected connection can teach us about first impressions, welcome and learning to see more.

THE WONDER ATLAS

They Looked Different

🌱 From Wonder Observation 0051

What an adoption story and an unexpected connection can teach us about first impressions, welcome and learning to see more.

A Wonder Essay from The Wonder Atlas

Learning to see, one wonder at a time.

I was driving to work one morning, listening to a podcast conversation with the psychologist Dr Nick Epley, when he began talking about two of his children, whom he and his wife, Jan, had adopted from Ethiopia.

He remembered the time when they were still deciding whether to say yes.

They had photographs of the children.

They looked.

They talked.

They wondered whether they could do it.

Then they decided.

Yes.

Looking back on that moment, Dr Epley said:

“As soon as Jan and I said yes we can do this…”

Something changed.

“They just looked better,” he said. “You felt more love. They looked different.”

Something in me moved.

I wasn’t expecting it.

I wasn’t even sure why.

But I have learned to pay attention when that happens.

Not because emotion always tells me what something means.

It doesn’t.

But sometimes it seems to tap me gently on the shoulder and say:

Stay here for a moment.

Dr Andrew Huberman seemed struck by it too.

The photographs had not changed.

The children had not changed.

Yet after the decision to adopt them, something about looking at them seemed to have changed.

Dr Epley said it again.

“They looked different.”

The conversation continued, but I kept thinking about those three words.

So what had changed?

Until that morning, I think I had assumed that seeing worked in a fairly simple direction.

We see.

We form an impression.

We decide what we think.

But this story seemed to disturb that order.

They had said yes.

The relationship had changed.

And somehow, so had the seeing.

I began thinking about people I had known.

Had I ever experienced anything like this?

Had someone ever seemed different to me, not because they had suddenly changed, but because I had been given the chance to know them better?

I thought of Jason.

I will call him Jason.

When I first met him, one of the first things I noticed was his tattoos.

He had a lot of them.

I knew almost nothing about him.

And yet an impression was already beginning to form.

Over time, we talked more.

Jason knew I loved hiking, and sometimes I would show him photographs from the places I had walked.

Mountains.

Lochs.

Paths stretching away into the distance.

I loved seeing his reaction.

He delighted in the photographs and talked about wanting to experience places like those for himself.

As we talked, the first picture I had formed became fuller.

Before Jason moved away, I gave him a small gift.

I put it in a bag and handed it to him before he left.

The next day, he came back.

He was carrying a large box of chocolates for all the staff to share.

He wanted to thank the team for the kindness they had shown him and for the way they had treated him.

He had brought a card too.

And for me, a book about epic walks across Britain.

He had remembered the photographs, our conversations and how much hiking meant to me.

He had been paying attention too.

Inside the card, he thanked the staff for how they had treated him.

And he wrote:

“Thank you for always smiling + making me feel welcome.”

When I thought about Jason after hearing the podcast, I found myself returning to our first meeting.

He had not suddenly become a different person.

I had simply come to know more of him.

And the book he gave me reminded me that the seeing had not been one-way.

We had both become a little more known.

Jason’s words made me wonder whether this is one of the quiet gifts of welcome.

It creates room.

For conversation.

For attention.

For a person to become more than the first few things we noticed about them.

We will never see everything.

But we may see more.

I began to wonder whether the problem with some first impressions is not that they are entirely wrong.

It is that they are unfinished.

We may notice something real.

The danger comes when the little we have seen becomes all we think there is to see.

One detail grows too large.

And the person begins to disappear behind it.

There may be more here than I can currently see.

I have found myself carrying that sentence.

Not as an excuse to ignore what is true.

Not as a reason to abandon wisdom or discernment.

Simply as an act of humility.

There may be more here than I can currently see.

The longer I have carried this question, the more I have begun to realise what one of my oldest Christian beliefs might ask of the way I see other people.

The Bible says that every human being is made in the image of God.

That phrase can sound abstract.

One way of thinking about it is through a mirror. A mirror is not the person whose image it carries, but it can reveal something of them.

Christian faith makes an extraordinary claim: that every human life carries something of the imprint of the God who made them.

Not only the people I admire.

Not only the people I understand.

Everyone.

If that is true, then another person’s worth does not begin when I notice it.

Their life matters before I understand their story.

They are worthy of kindness before I discover everything interesting, funny, creative or generous about them.

Their value is not something I give them by seeing it.

It was already there.

The children in those photographs did not become more valuable when two people said yes.

Jason did not become more valuable as I came to know him.

What changed was not their value.

More became visible.

I still do not know exactly what changed when Dr Epley and his wife looked at those photographs after saying yes.

I do not know how much had changed in perception.

Or attention.

Or emotion.

Or meaning.

I only know that the story made me stop.

And once I had stopped, I began remembering people.

Jason was one of them.

Tomorrow, I will see people I know well and others I will meet only briefly.

Impressions will form.

I cannot pretend they will not.

But I hope I am learning not to close the story too soon.

To leave a little room.

For another conversation.

Another detail.

Another photograph shared.

Another part of the person I have not yet seen.

And room for them to know something more of me.

I think again of those photographs.

Nothing in them had changed.

The children were the same children.

And somehow,

they looked different.

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Continue the Wonder

Every Wonder Essay begins with a simple observation.

Some readers are content simply to pause and wonder.

Others want to keep exploring.

If you’d like to follow this observation further, I’ve created a Research Companion containing the science, psychology, history, theology and further questions that grew from this Wonder Seed.

Continue exploring → Research Companion

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