An Other Time

It's hard to know what another person is thinking. What's going on inside their head. And even if they tell you, it's still not the whole story. Not by a long shot.

You see, one's emotions, one's hopes, one's dreams...it is these things that given the inner sancta of our minds the particular individualistic tinge that sets us apart from everyone else.

Simply stated, it's the very unique way of being you. It really is.

Seen this way, it is near unto impossible for you to ever know what someone else is thinking. Simply unfathomable. I can get close, yes...but never close enough to know entirely. Each person just has all this stuff that we can't ever seem to know about.

Beyond the simple facts of nature that add to this difficulty, the masks of our world and its media and customs often don't allow it, making in effect each person appear to us a very different kind of being than they really are.

Because we are the only people we really know, it's very easy to assume that others are less three-dimensional than we are That they are simply actors in the play in which we're starring. We (well, most of us, anyway) don't think this way because we want to be arrogant or cruel. Not at all. We simply think this way because it's easiest. Quickest. Because it allows us to move through life as "effectively" as possible without getting bogged down in all the details. It would, after all, certainly be very difficult to walk through the streets of Manhattan taking the time to really consider every individual we meet. Very difficult.

Which is why we don't. Why we learn to make others into "others" while ourselves remaining three-dimensional beings seemingly immune to such treatment.

Problem is, this type of living never lets us really get into the lives of others. Never lets us really share them. Never lets us care for the stranger as a person whose life is just as "larger than life" as ours always seems to be.

Ya, we can't know anyone as we know ourselves. That's a given. But maybe if we begin to consider the possibility that others could have inner lives similar to the ones we know so well, our race through life might slow down just a bit and take in a few of our fellow runners.

Each of us is special, yes. Full of energy and vigor and emotion and love and sadness and hope. I like that about myself...knowing that I'm unique. The thing is...that means the guy walking down the street has all these things to. And I need to keep that in mind.