Years ago I worked with this sweet young woman who had migrated to New Hampshire from the south. She and her husband were so in love. He was always surprising her with getaways and showering her with gifts. I was happy for her but envious of what they had.

After I left the job, I reached out to her to continue the friendship. During our visit, she regaled me with this horror story. She was getting divorced. She had found out that her loving husband had a whole other family across town, complete with pregnant wife and kids! He had told her he never wanted children. As you can imagine, she was devastated. The whole story shocked me, and I started to wonder, how well I knew the people in my life. It left me unsettled with this unanswered question; how well do we really know anyone?

This experience changed the woman, and no longer was she this carefree, always smiling, innocent. She became guarded and somewhat cynical and moved back home to be with family.

How Can We Not See What is Right in Front of Our Eyes?

My friend had lived with her husband, day in and day out. Somehow he was able to keep this secret life from her. He even had his paychecks split so he could support his two families. How does someone do that and not get caught or let it show, even a little?

During my spiritual journey, I have realized a few things. We only let people in just so far and we show them what we want to show them and we don’t show everyone the same thing. We are like magicians putting on a regular show for whoever will watch. It wasn’t just this one guy, we all do it, all the time.

There are facets of my personality that I share only with certain friends. There are things I would say to one friend that I would never say to another. I let down my guard only in certain situations. I behave like a chameleon to some degree, and I think we all do.

Whenever there is a violent incident on the news, the family and friends are interviewed, and they always paint the picture of a person completely different than the one who committed the heinous crime. Again, how much of that person’s real personality did anyone ever see?

Looking at it From a Different Perspective

I started to think about this from a spiritual perspective and listening to so much Abraham Hicks colored my new view. If you break it down, we are all constantly changing, evolving and rearranging who we are, who we want to be and along with it, our personalities change. We are in constant flux so how could anyone get a bead on who we are? Sometimes we don’t even know the answer to that question.

The reason many relationships fail is that people change, or maybe they don’t change enough, but their partners do.

Who we are is made up of our beliefs, our thoughts and our experiences and no two people ever share the identical path. So in effect, we can never honestly know another person, but then again, we too are on a path of continuous evolution, and they cannot know us either. We are all moving targets.

Often we see only a sliver of who someone is, and it’s easy to make a quick judgment. I have had situations in business where I had a bad experience with someone that I would write off as a jerk because of negative interaction. Later I find out this same person devotes their weekends to volunteering or something else selfless.

In casual encounters, we rarely get to see the “whole” person. Although we may not see the best of them at this moment, they have many other facets to them that may be positive and helpful to humanity. I am trying to keep an open mind and remember this more often.

False Security in Thinking We “Know”

I have a friend who I know very well. At least I believe I do until I say something or make an assumption. Then he calls me on it claiming that he would never do that or doesn’t feel that way at all, and I am left surprised.

There are other times when I find myself annoyed when someone “thinks” they know me and they get me wrong. But then again, maybe these people see something I cannot yet see in myself. It is hard to know who is right at any given moment.

I think for the most part we like to feel intimately connected to others and that we know them inside and out, and that they know us. It gives us a sense of safety and comfort. However, that feeling of security is based on smoke and mirrors. We have no real way of knowing if their actions will follow suit with what we know about them, just as we are often surprised by our own choices and behavior.

More Allowing, More Ease & More Freedom

So I think the bottom line is we stop trying so hard to convince ourselves that we know someone inside and out. We stop painting that solid picture of who we are because it may change today, tomorrow or the next day. If we loosen our tight grip on this need to pinhole everyone (ourselves included), we may find more ease in the way we interact with the world.

Letting go a bit feels good. Releasing them and ourselves from having to “know” each other well. Let everyone just evolve, flow and change as they need to and give ourselves that same gift.

I think we might find a lot less stress in dealing with people and find we like ourselves more if we allow change to take place at the pace it needs to, no forcing, and more allowing.

Wouldn’t it be great if we all just accepted everyone “as-is” with the disclaimer that we all are all subject to change at any moment?