‘Knowing you’ is often followed by a behaviour prediction. ‘Knowing you’ is the beginning of a sentence that tells you what the other person thinks you might do. It also tells you whether that person really knows you. Many times it will also tell you something about yourself. In my case it is mostly, that I have recently developed the talent to zip up and let people think they know me.
But can anybody really, really know you?
While not all us have a dark side and most of us are only familiar with serial killers from movies, each of us has an inaccessible depth. A ‘deep inside’ that others cannot see or know or understand. A depth that is sometimes not even accessible to ourselves.
Who can fathom a beautiful woman feeling the need for make up or cosmetic surgery?
Who can claim to understand a devoted family man seeking the thrill of an extra marital affair?
Who can fully analyse the need for people to ‘know’ other people?
Constantly changing and developing, the human is this fascinating animal that becomes something else just when you’ve got it pinned down and dissected. Rotating on it’s own axis and evolving with each new experience – tomorrow it will be different from today. Maybe not radically. Maybe radically. You cannot know for sure. And yet we are disappointed when he doesn’t behave in exactly the predicted manner.
How often we forget that ‘knowing you’ was a hypothesis. Not the conclusion.
What do you think?