You might be a stranger to me, or an acquaintance, close friend, or even one of my closest family members. Whoever you are, reader, I do not truly know who you are.
You are made up of uncountable personality traits, feelings, and world comprehension systems. Parts of you are well-defined and might as well be set in stone. Some parts are undeveloped and may change in a moment. You are physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, flawed, and brilliant. Your most common attitudes around me may not be the same ones you have most often around someone else. And it would take years, maybe decades or forever, to learn everything about how you see the world. It is impossible for another human to describe you perfectly and completely, even if you allow for the imperfections of language. Even you yourself could not accomplish this.
When you care about someone, you want to learn more about them, even though you’ll never understand them completely. But sometimes, you want to already know more about them, so you decide that you already do.
If you decide you know someone through and through and start treating them accordingly, they may notice and dislike it. You can’t get a human being completely right. It can be insulting to imply that someone is so simple and predictable that you’ve figured them all out, especially when you’ve only had a few encounters and fewer deep conversations.
Avoid feeling annoyed or lied to if someone you thought you knew everything about begins showing you that you were wrong. It is difficult for some of us to know how to proceed in a relationship when the other person begins revealing aspects of their nature we hadn’t guessed. For those of us who believe we are really good judges of character, we may even refuse to accept those aspects as legitimate parts of the person.
Your goal in your friendships, partnerships, and any meaningful relationships isn’t to completely comprehend the other person. It's not even to reach a certain point in that endeavor, such as 70% comprehension or something. Instead of seeing an end goal or deciding you’ve already reached one you’re satisfied with, enjoy the process of discovering others. We would be much less interesting if we were that easy to understand, after all.
