Even the closest of family, friends, co-workers, and others.
We only see and know the outside, exterior, or behavioral aspects–that which we can experience, even intuitively, as much as we do and can.
And our inner experiences and selves are always deeper, more nuanced, and layered than an outsider can ever experience even when they try, successfully, to ‘walk in our shoes’ to some degree.
In that sense, we never truly and fully know what’s inside another person, where they really come from as far as they are concerned. There are always limits, which create a fundamental alienation and separation between us all.
For example, do you really know how I felt that cold winter afternoon at age 5 when I was playing outside in the snow, an old tenant at my grandmother’s house growling as his health declined and they did not want my youthful self making any noise inside? How could you possibly know that I was thinking of watching Howdy Doody on the second black-and-white tv I had ever known as I played in the snow building caves and forts? That I was imagining, even then, what it would be like to be watching Howdy Doody if I myself was dying on a couch in the house?
Our past and current experiences are specifically detailed with one thought, feeling, image, or impression often leading to another swiftly and automatically. Exactly how would you know any of the above inside experience unless I recorded and shared it, and unless you had access to this blog and had the time to read it? And then, even if you read it and sort of understood and identified with it, you would only have an incredibly transitory, momentary, small fragment of who the author is or has been.
You could spend a lifetime trying to read my blog and getting closer to me, and even then you would not fully and completely know who I am, what I have been, and the totality of my life experience and background. In this fact, major limits and limitations built in from the get-go.
Which takes me back to ’60s psychotherapist R.D. Laing’s work in The Politics of Experience, in the process of discussing mental illness or the everyday experience of people and the limits of their relationships. The old classic song “You Don’t Know Me” also readily comes to mind as a basic relevant, related truth.
Well, obviously we could take a lifetime trying to fathom the essence of one other person we’re close to and never touch bottom or fully succeed. But what about our own lives? Don’t we have some obligation to know ourselves better as our own time slips away?
My own approach, finally, has been to follow Plato’s, Socrates’ and Aeschylus’s “Know thyself” and Montaigne’s purpose to write about himself since he knew himself better than anyone else. My mission of the past 30 years on the side anyway has been to plumb my own depths and explore my own consciousness to better understand consciousness in the lives of people and to study something I have a better chance of realizing than ‘plumbing’ the lives of the many others could or ever would yield.
And I still, incidentally, study others also at the same time as I have notably done on this blog of great people, their lives, and their works. I have an abiding interest in genius, creativity, and imagination: the processes, contexts, and choices of others to fulfill themselves, to follow their bliss, to overcome obstacles, challenges, and limiting contexts to fully be themselves, to realize their otherwise unfulfilled potentials, and to express themselves and visions as fully as possible. A ruling passion for all manifestations of (Maslow’s) self-actualization.
But if I was to boil it all down to one word or idea as to what is essential, necessary, and fulfilling in life, I would say consciousness, still. ‘It’ all begins and ends with consciousness and as many awarenesses, epiphanies, and valuable life insights one can garner in the span of living. What and how much one fully knows, comprehends, and appreciates, finally. A position from which to base and live the rest of one’s life.
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Once you realize the base/basis of consciousness, then everything and everyone opens up. You understand and appreciate much more about others, nature and life.
Once you realize the limits and limitations of experience and relationships, then personal consciousness becomes central and necessary.
A person with minimal or limited consciousness is cut off from many of personal and life’s possibilities.
If you know yourself, you have a much better chance of knowing others better.
Often the key thing of another’s experience is their consciousness of it and the personal breakthroughs that affords.
Alienation and separation are common experiences, but consciousness can transcend them.
When approaching or experiencing something or someone, an open mind and paying attention to details are basic.
Relationships are never easy even when there is consciousness in both parties. There are often built-in obstacles and limitations. But fuller, shared, mutual consciousness can stabilize and support relationships.
There is frequently a built-in frustration with communication. Expression of one’s consciousness verbally and nonverbally must needs be accurate, honest, and considerate.
Many people often feel misunderstood or incompletely known. That will happen when one is largely, imperfectly known from the outside or merely/mostly by one’s external behavior. Others frequently misinterpret or too automatically look for flaws and mindlessly troll or, limitedly, criticize and complain.
If you have a reasonable amount of consciousness, you will be more relaxed, laid-back, and at peace with the world and others. You quickly realize there is much you cannot control and that the world is mostly in others’ hands.
If you are more fully conscious, you are more likely to have less conflict in your life and could conceivably be more creative and successfully expressive and articulate.
How much do you miss of life and potential knowledge or wisdom when you don’t think, don’t like or choose to think, or don’t know yourself in any depth?