When I teach beginning creative writing classes, at some point we cover the difference between what are commonly referred to as “flat” and “round” characters. A flat character is just that: a character lacking in dimensionality or substance. At its worst, the character is cliché or stereotypical, a cardboard cutout of a type of person. A round character, on the other hand, has texture: It conveys a sense of individual personality, distinction, and particularity. In other words, a round character, though fictional, feels like a real person. And this can be true even if the character is obviously fictitious: Orcs and devils and wizards can be more or less round. For obvious reasons, round characters are important for most stories. This isn’t to say that flat characters are always to be avoided. In fact, some stories, such as fables, intentionally rely on flat characters, or archetypes, for the purpose of conveying a clear moral. Plus, most novels require both round and flat characters. If every character parading across the page had to carry the weight of being a round character, the story would be inflated and plodding, and we wouldn’t ever get anywhere.
As the protagonist of our own lives, so to speak, we also have a cast of round and flat characters inhabiting our lives. This isn’t to say that some people are objectively flat but, rather, that they are flat within the admittedly narrow orbit of our perception. We are surrounded by people who are only lightly rendered to us: our dentist, barber, local coffee barista, remote coworker, and so on. We might know limited details about their lives or interests, but they remain largely undeveloped sketches in our minds. And even if we wanted to deepen many of these relationships, we are limited by the very structure of our brains. We are finite, limited creatures and, unlike God, are incapable of truly knowing a vast number of people. The British anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized humans can comfortably sustain only about one hundred fifty stable relationships. Of that one hundred fifty, fifty to seventy can be meaningfully deep. And when it comes to close and intimate relationships, the number is closer to five to twenty. While experts disagree about the exact numeric range for each band of human relations, the undeniable point is that there is a clear boundary: Our capacity for relationships is restricted.
A critical goal in this life is training ourselves to see and to know God, yes, but also to see and know God dwelling in others.
The problem, though, is that we can often see what should be the round characters of our lives as flat ones. Further, even when we’re meeting someone new, perhaps someone we’ll never see again and will remain for us a flat character, we can fail to encounter them and glean something that, while not majorly profound, still offers us a glimpse of depth. In other words, we can develop a habit of seeing others as mere objects or props. Consider being at a party or social gathering and locked in a particularly boring or exhausting conversation. How difficult is it to be present to that person? How challenging is it to appreciate that person when we don’t feel we’re getting any benefit from interacting with them? Instead, we tend to gravitate to those who are naturally interesting to us, who offer us affection, humor, fun, a sense of being seen, and so on. And that’s fine, but doing so all the time can lead us to interact only with people based on what we receive from them. Is this person entertaining me? Do I like how I feel around this person? Does this person affirm or encourage me? Most of us aren’t intentionally trying to objectify others in this way. And we likely have all experienced what it’s like to be on the other end of such an encounter. Maybe we have been in a conversation where it’s clear the other person isn’t really listening to us, or the person has lost interest because our professional network or reputation won’t be of any obvious service to him or her. No one likes this feeling, of course, because it bucks against what we intuitively sense: We should be treated as unique persons and not objects of utility. Again, we often aren’t aware that we’re doing this ourselves, plus there might be a host of seemingly legitimate reasons why we are. Maybe our anxiety, nervousness, or the myriad of stressors in our lives prevents us from being fully present with someone. Maybe we simply don’t have the patience or energy. But taken to the extreme, if everyone in our lives is more or less an object to gratify our desires or preferences, we are living in a state devoid of love. Another name for such a state is hell, where others are objects to be controlled, manipulated, or dominated purely for our own sake.
The only reason we were created—the whole point of our lives and existence—is to be in relationship with God and his creatures. That’s it. Everything else either supports that end or doesn’t. Since we were created to be dependent on God and each other, seeking relationships that give us something in return—love, affirmation, esteem, friendship, joy—is not only human but good and necessary. But since we are also called by Jesus to be perfect, to be like God the Father, we are also called to give without expecting anything in return, just as God gives to us. And to give in this way is to love the way God does. But loving this way presupposes we first see others, which means developing a vision that is capable of beholding the people in our lives as subjects and not objects. How do we do this? How do we train ourselves to see the inherent depth of another person created in the image and likeness of God? How do we learn to appreciate the nuanced ways all of the people in our lives reflect a unique aspect of God’s being?
What makes heaven supremely blissful is that we will see and know God. Theologians refer to this experience as the beatific vision. So, in a sense, a critical goal in this life is training ourselves to see and to know God, yes, but also to see and know God dwelling in others. We are told by Christ of the mystical reality of God’s presence within our neighbor: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). However, if we are not capable of seeing other people as unique and lovable—especially when they don’t give us anything in return—then how will we do so in heaven?
There is a great scene in the novel Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, which offers a fictionalized account of how the real-life oil painting of the same name by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer came to be. In the scene, Vermeer attempts to teach the subject of the painting, a girl named Griet, to see things with the eyes of an artist.
“Come here, Griet. Look out of the window. What color are those clouds?”
“Why, white, sir.”
“Are they?”
“And grey. Perhaps it will snow.”
“Come, Griet, you can do better than that. Think of your vegetables.”
“My vegetables, sir?”
“Think of how you separated the whites. Your turnips and your onions. Are they the same white?”
“No, the turnip has green in it, the onion yellow.”
“Exactly. Now, what colors do you see in the clouds?”
“There is some blue in them, and yellow as well. And there is some green!”
“You will find there is little pure white in clouds, yet people say they are white.”
What looks on the surface to be merely white to the untrained eye is for the artist a subtle play of rich colors. In John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, he writes, “Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make it a work of art, a masterpiece.” While Vermeer is speaking to Griet of nature, the point applies to our universal calling to be “moral artists” who craft lives of beauty: We must be willing to gaze long enough at reality, especially at other people, to see the myriad of texture and depth under the surface. Because by doing so, we come to see others as unique and lovable, and if more lovable, then easier to actually love. We practice this mode of seeing every time we engage in meditative prayer, where within our mind’s eye we attempt to gaze lovingly at God. We do so by taking time to really observe nature, as Griet does with the clouds. We do so by reading literature and philosophy, or gazing at a work of art or listening to music, and then taking the time to think deeply about what we just encountered. We also do so by approaching people we don’t want to approach, people who annoy or bother or bore us, and doing our best to be curious about and present to them.
On the other hand, we’re certainly not doing this when we scroll through YouTube influencer videos, binge another forgettable, flat-charactered Netflix show, or ask ChatGPT to tell us what the “meaning” of a book is that we’d rather not put the effort into reading. These things have their place, I guess, and sometimes we need to just be entertained or “veg out” or whatever. But if this is all we’re doing, then we’re training ourselves to expect instant reward that requires no sustained attention, patience, or virtue. Really seeing others, be they flat or round characters in the stories of our lives, is hard: It takes time, patience, and a willingness to forgo immediate rewards. But the more we do it, the better we become at apprehending reality: the better we become at beholding others in love. And the better we get at that, the more prepared we will be for seeing and loving God for all eternity.