8 Nov 2019

Do we really know anyone at all?




I was reading a novel, Mostly Dead Things, by Kristen Arnett. In the final chapter of the book, the protagonist Jessa is having a heart-to-heart with her mother, and the mother tells Jessa that she feel she doesn’t really know her anymore, and Jessa replies “nobody really knows anybody”.

It’s not a new sentiment, writers have repeated it dozens of times, it’s almost a cliché. But it struck me how simple and true it is, not to mention how tragic.

I still remember a relative (an older lady) telling me how shocked she was when her husband of thirty-five years told her that he preferred firm greenish tomatoes, not yet ripe. I’ve been married to him for Thirty-five years, and I’ve served him tomatoes in all kinds of daily meals, and never once did I know that he preferred them unripe, she said smiling in astonishment.

Sure, people change their minds about how they like their tomatoes; our taste in food is always changing. But it remains a mystery how we don’t really know one another. I claim that I know my daughter who is turning fourteen-years-old next December, but I’m baffled by some of the things she says, and does almost every other day. I used to think I at least knew her moods, what she likes to read, how she likes to dress, her favorite color, and what she likes to eat. But there were many incidents when I guessed wrong.

People change, people grow, and the things we refuse to share with each other are – unfortunately – a lot more than the things we do share. Why is that? Why do we only scratch the surface of those we love and cherish? I don’t know the answer to this. We are mysteries, to others and in many ways to ourselves.