In life we tend to try determine people’s personality, character, status e.tc. so that we can categorize them, and in a sense feel like we know them . Once we feel like we know someone, we continuously call on them to be that person that, in quotes, we know.
If people fall out of this knowing, we tend to meet them with criticism, judgement, requests and pressure for them to tow the line or threats to withdrawal from the relationship if they don’t go back to said known person.
It gives us a sense of certainty, of control—this knowing of who someone is. We say, “Oh, that’s just how they are,” or assume that some will automatically do something and move on, confident in our assessment.
However, people are not static. We are not fixed points in space and time. We are constantly growing, evolving, being affected by the life, adjusting, adapting, healing, unlearning, learning, boundarying, exploring, surviving, thriving and everything in between.
This lifing can often result at people encountering different versions of us and us encountering different versions of ourselves in various points in our life.
Therefore, a person can never full be known. Acting with people from a point of knowing them only serves to box them in and try to get them to conform to version of them that you have seen glimpses of or have completely created in your mind. We continue to call people into the versions of themselves that we have come to recognize. We expect consistency. We demand familiarity.
When someone we have known to be kind suddenly becomes distant, we say they’ve changed, often with a tone of disappointment. When a person who once exuded strength reveals their vulnerability, we hesitate, unsure of what to do with this new, unfamiliar aspect of them. And in doing so, we fail to truly see them. Not because they have changed, but because we have only allowed ourselves to know them in a singular dimension.
But what if we stopped trying to know people in a way that limits them? What if, instead of grasping for certainty, we embraced the unknown? People are not meant to be defined in rigid terms; they are meant to be experienced. Moment by moment, phase by phase, like a story that is still being written. To experience someone is to meet them where they are, not where they used to be. It is to hold space for their growth, their contradictions, their transitions. It is to acknowledge that they are different today than they were yesterday, and they will be different still tomorrow.
What is needed instead, is to approach people as ever-changing landscapes rather than static portraits.
I put forward that, relationships are not about knowing people but experiencing them.
To experience someone is to approach without assumption, to observe without judgment, to love without condition. It is to stand in awe of their complexity rather than shrink them down to something manageable. It is to allow ourselves to be surprised, challenged, and moved by their unfolding existence.
Perhaps the greatest disservice we do to one another is to believe we have someone figured out. Because the moment we believe we know someone completely, we stop paying attention. We stop being curious. We stop truly seeing them. But when we choose to experience people instead, we engage with the fullness of who they are—not just who we once decided they were.
The greatest disservice we can also do to ourselves is also to agree to be known. Because then we become small, we become constrained, we become suffocated, we become unfulfilled, we become stuck and stagnant and we become boring.
I posit, that we should continuously resist the urge to know others and be known by others. The urge to define and be defined.
I heard someone once say that when when asked what she does, she said “I do many things”, and when asked who she is, she replies ” I am many things”
So let us not seek to define people in ways that confine them. Let us, instead, embrace the continuous call to experience them. Paragraph by Paragraph. Page by Page. Chapter by chapter. Sequel by Sequel.
