Oftentimes when people do something unorthodox with another person, whether it be a friend, relative, or secret lover, you’ll hear them justify what they are doing with something along the lines of, “Well I’ve known this person forever” or “I’ve known this person my entire life” or “I’ve known this person for 20 years”.
What if how long you’ve known someone doesn’t really matter? Has it ever occurred to you that time is not a great measurement of knowing someone? What really do you know about most people, honestly?
So you might ask, “At what point can you say you know someone if it doesn’t matter how long you’ve known them for?”
It’s a great question, but I think the answer is never. You can actually never know anyone. When you say you know someone, all that it means is you have a compiled history of this person of things you’ve either done with them or things you know about them, but at any given time all of that can be irrelevant in the spur of a moment. History does not predict what people will do today or tomorrow. It only presents a statistical likelihood of what they might do and how they might react to certain scenarios based off a predisposition.
I’ve had childhood friends that I stayed very close to change their entire personal philosophy in just a few years, making them completely unrecognizable to anyone who lost contact with them over the years, but more importantly, it makes them less predictable to someone who “really knows” them well.
Basically, I end up with “this person did this for 20 years”, “then in a 2 year span they did all this” and now “they do this”, and if you ask me what they are going to do next, I will simply respond with “no fucking idea”.
It is human nature to change and human desire to want to change. Eventually you’ll long for a change or be forced to change, and the changes will happen. Changes covering every aspect of your life pertaining to who you’re with, how you view money, your friends, politics, religion, and more. It can happen in a single spontaneous and instant moment and you’ll find yourself on an entirely new path going the opposite the direction you once were.
Meanwhile, all the people who thought they knew you will stand there in awe talking about how they could have never seen that coming.
After years and years of pretending it was possible to know someone I finally came to the realization that…I don’t even know myself. I’ve changed so much in the past decade and even past year that I would be highly unrecognizable to even myself. I often give the example of how much I’ve changed by saying if I met myself two years ago me and myself wouldn’t get along today. I’m sure this holds true for a lot of people in some way.
So if you don’t really know yourself, how can you know others?
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