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“Can you ever really know someone?”

This is an interesting question. One that I didn’t give much thought to, until my mate Liam, raised this very issue, when he said:

“You can get to know someone but never “really” know everything about them. You can only know someone based on what they choose to reveal to you.”

His countenance is very much like that of another friend of mine, with whom I had been having some intense discussions. I have been thinking about this quite deeply, and yes, they are quite correct. But my position is one of intuiting [intuition] or divining, if you like, a person. What you observe in a person, is just as revelatory as what they reveal to you, if not more so.

It’s true, you cannot know everything about a person. For many reasons, but I ask the question, “do you really have to know everything about a person, before you can say, you know them, or know them well?”

Sure, details tell you alot about a person, and they can be quite illuminating: and can cast your friend, lover, sibling, parent, in a totally different light, or reaffirm what you already think or know about them. But perplexing is one friend of mine, whose insistence that I now know him, really well, moves him to give me a percentage rating of just how well. I, rebutted his argument, that I have always known him. I have made divinations about him, and other friends that have proven to be correct. Equally, I have made divinations about friends, Alison, for example, that have turned out to be false. I do wonder thought, whether Alison is a female version of me!

I don’t take things at face value, preferring to let my instincts guide me. I place a high value on my intuition [or instinct], unshakeable at times. It has given me some good friends, introduced me to some rather good people life, and steered me clear of trouble [generally speaking of course].

Intuition even guides my own journey into self awareness. Feelings, thoughts, images and respones all come before any label as to what they are. So, knowing all that I do about me, can I say for certainty, that all these feelings, thoughts, images and responses, are me and that I know me?

I love my friends. I really do, and so, Liam, Alison, Damian, Sue, Michael, Davo, Hugo, et al, can reveal of themselves what they want, but unfortunately for them, I go reading between the lines. Trying to divine more than they are prepared to divulge. Trying to make sense of their personality, the person inside the body they inhabit, that has seen however many years of living. I’m not saying that I am always right, but invariably they do [or will do] something, to prove me right. Even if I am off the mark.

I believe that we all have a personality, or an essence, that is indeed knowable. That one can say with confidence, that they know that person. My Mountain Man, for example, the longest enduring friendship I have, nearly 30 years, has made the biggest impact on me in terms of how I view life, love, relationships, and indeed, what it means to be male. I would say I know him, very well. A lot of what I have learnt about him, came not from what he chose to reveal, but from my own instincts. Of course, when we chat and talk about things, I would go reading between the lines [the divine rods, you know who they perk up], or get a sense of something, that he will prove me right at some point. It’s a bad habit of mine, that old devil, analytical thinking.

Sure, there are differences in how deeply you know a person, due to duration of the relationship you have with them, equally, you can still not know them, inspite of that duration. Sometimes, duration is immaterial, and I connect quite readily and deeply.

Which brings me back to the first part my mate Liam’s assertion:

“You can get to know someone but never “really” know everything about them.”

My question then becomes, does it really matter if you don’t know everything about a person? For em, if I have a good sense of a person, isn’t knowing all this other stuff, mere detail?

I did this exercise with another friend. We took turns in writing a list of things about each other, and then we would read and see what we didn’t know. Sure, there will be details, that will surprise, they will be details that will illuminate, and there will be details that will confirm. For the few things we did not know about each other, did it mean that I didn’t really know him? For me, the exercise did not change my view of him, so to know this or that, was a non event.

Then again, there was no revelatory detail such as murder, pillage or rape. In which case, such revelations would really challenge my perception of him.

And for the last part of Liam’s assertion:

“You can only know someone based on what they choose to reveal to you.”

I do agree, but as I said earlier, about intuition and divination. A person cannot always control what becomes known about them.

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