Maybe It Isn't Energy?

 I have been sitting with a question that refuses to leave me.

How do we come to know another human before we consciously know them?

Long before words are exchanged, before stories are shared, before trust has been earned, something happens. We notice them. We are drawn toward them or gently pulled away. Sometimes we feel an immediate sense of ease. Other times we experience hesitation that we cannot explain.

Perhaps we call it chemistry. Perhaps we call it intuition. Perhaps we simply call it energy.

Whatever name we choose, it raises a fascinating question. Are we recognizing something in another person, or are we recognizing something within ourselves?

From a scientific perspective, psychologists suggest that familiarity and similarity influence attraction. Similarity Attraction Theory proposes that we naturally gravitate toward people who share our values, interests, communication styles, and beliefs. The more familiar something becomes, the more positively we tend to evaluate it. Maybe instant chemistry is simply rapid pattern recognition, our brains efficiently searching for what feels safe and known.

Attachment theory offers another explanation. The people who immediately feel comfortable may unconsciously remind us of significant relationships from our childhood. Sometimes these patterns lead us toward healthy relationships. Sometimes they invite us to recreate dynamics that no longer serve us.

The body seems to know before the mind catches up. Then I wonder about the paradox.

Why is it that one person winks at us and we receive it with warmth and delight, while another person performs the exact same gesture and it feels unsettling?

The action is identical. The experience is completely different.  Perhaps the difference exists in the invisible space between us.

The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that we encounter the world through our lived bodies. We do not objectively experience another person as though we are detached observers. We experience them through memory, history, identity, emotion, and culture. Every interaction is relational. Meaning is created not by one person or the other, but in the space where our lives intersect.

Connection is not simply something that happens to us. Connection is something we embody. Lately I have been fascinated by the concept of embodiment. Embodiment is the conscious experience of living through the body rather than solely through the thinking mind. It is the awareness that emotions are not abstract ideas but physical sensations. A racing heart. Relaxed shoulders. A deep breath. A smile that arrives before we realize we are smiling.

Perhaps what I have been calling "energy" is simply my body participating in a conversation before my conscious mind has translated it into language. Perhaps every meaningful encounter is altering something within me. Not just my thoughts but my posture, my nervous system, my expectations, and my future decisions like every connection leaves a trace.

Interestingly, artificial intelligence researchers have arrived at a similar conclusion.

They describe embodied intelligence as the idea that true intelligence does not exist as a disconnected brain floating in isolation. Intelligence emerges through interaction with an environment. It perceives, responds, adapts, and learns through continuous feedback.

In many ways, humans are no different. We become who we are through interaction. We learn through movement, through relationships, through experiences, and through every conversation that changes how we see ourselves and the world around us. Identity is not created in isolation; it is continuously negotiated in the presence of others.

This shifts the question for me. The question is no longer:

Should I keep this person in my life?

Instead, I find myself asking:

Who am I becoming when I am with them?

Do they make me more curious? Do they expand my thinking? Do they introduce me to ways of knowing I have never considered? Do they challenge my assumptions while allowing me to remain fully myself?

The most meaningful relationships are not always the easiest ones. Sometimes they are the ones that invite transformation. Perhaps we are not simply attracted to another person's energy. Perhaps we are recognizing possibilities. A possibility of becoming more compassionate, more courageous, more creative, or more fully ourselves?

There is, of course, a calculated risk in every new connection that allows another human close enough to influence us is to accept that we might change. We gather information. We observe. We feel. Our body responds before our mind has completed its analysis. Then, consciously, we make a choice; to step closer, remain curious, begin a conversation, or walk away.

Every relationship asks us to move. And every movement changes us.

Maybe embodiment is not simply the awareness of bodily sensations. Maybe embodiment is the moment our body, mind, and experience align and ask us to respond. I can. So I will. Perhaps that is what growth has always been. Not certainty. Not perfect reasoning. But the willingness to trust that some connections are invitations to become. And maybe the greatest paradox of being human is this:

We spend so much time searching for people who understand us, when the people who truly change our lives are often the ones who introduce us to parts of ourselves, we have yet to discover.

Maybe we never truly come to know another person first. Maybe, in the brief moment before words are spoken, we are simply catching a glimpse of who we might become because they entered our story.