Just You

When someone you thought you knew well does something completely unexpected and something completely contrary to the person you thought you knew, it leaves you with an intensely bewildering sense of not knowing that person at all. But, it's never really that person whom you don't know, it's always just you.

If you doubt this truth, as many will, then you ask yourself honestly how it is that you know anyone at all. We say we "know" someone when our experience with that person forms a consistent pattern. We then typically lean on our experience with that person and expect them to remain consistent, to not change.

If a person we meet is unpredictable or inconsistent, then we never get the sense of knowing them. It is like predictability that allows us the sense of knowing anyone, or anything for that matter.

But ultimately, nothing (and no one) is ever truly predictable. Of course I'm saying only that things change, people change. Nothing remains the same, or behaves the same, through time. Not even molecules. Atomic particles change their behavior according to their proximity and relationship to other particles. So do people.

So the next time someone does something you don't expect, ask yourself who YOU really are, not them.