Is Figuring Out Someone That Easy?

Fully Understanding A Person

People may have said this to you “I know you better than you know yourself”.

Or, early in the relationship couples sometimes say to one another “I am still figuring you out”, in marriage “I never seem to figure you out”.

And at the point of break up, “I know you so well that I know this was your fault” or “Here I thought I had figured you out, but you proved me wrong”.

My mother used to tell me “You are my son, so no one knows you better than me.” But nowadays she doesn’t say this phrase as much.

My question is,

Do we really know someone?

Forget about the person you are in a relationship with or married to. Even if I take the example of our family especially Mother and Father, siblings, long-time close friends, relatives, and even neighbors.

Does any one of them know the real us?

The answer is NO.

Why the Statement is Baseless?

A person from the moment of birth till the moment of death is constantly evolving. Learning, experiencing, feeling, and absorbing things. These are the four things that shape us as humans.

No one can ever completely figure us out and this includes ourselves. 
A person leaves the house for work with a happy mentality, singing but comes back stressed out and quiet. Because in a single day, that person has experienced either all or a couple of those four things mentioned above.

You meet a person and start liking that person. After that naturally comes dating and being in a relationship. A lot of time has passed and suddenly you realized you don’t know the person who is sleeping next to you anymore.

Why didn’t you realize it first? Because we don’t mind small changes until it becomes something that is affecting us.

Then we wonder why our loved one has changed.

The answer is you among other things. You unconsciously helped to shape this unknown person.

Then how do we come to believe we know a person?

Because we DO know that person. But not the complete person, parts of themselves. Parts they like to show us.

You spend little time with a particular person so they don’t get to see all the parts. And also while meeting new people we stay conscious about how to behave. But when a certain amount of time has passed we let our guard down.

And the person on the other side starts wondering who is this?

With mother and father, we consciously show the sides that will make them proud to call us their children or sides they love to see and hide the not-so-lovable sides.

In a friend group, we only show the parts that are accepted in that group and hide the others. How else do you think a person has multiple groups of friends and all groups are different from one another?

Conclusion

The takeaway is simple, we can never know a person completely. We should stop living in the illusion that we do because eventually, this thought will get us hurt. Every person has many layers. Getting to see and understand each layer will take two of our lifetimes.

So keep your mind and heart always open for the people around you and you will realize what I am talking about.

Thank you for staying until the end!