Do we really know each other?

As part of my 2006 resolution to read more this year, I recently finished "The Razor's Edge" by W. Somerset Maugham. I was capitvated by the questions the author made me ask myself and how vividly you got to know his characters.....flaws and all. In several parts of the novel, the author speaks directly to you. The first chapter is him explaining to you how this novel came about. You see, the author is a transplant. A frenchman, who ends in the lowcountry of South Carolina because of World War II. As a "foreigner" he has a unique perspective on people and their relationships.

Ok....so now for the point. The following passage was in the first chapter......


"It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt how to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them. You can only know them if you are them".

When I read this passage for the first time, I had to go back and re-read it several other times. It really got me to think. If you agree with what the author is proposing, then it really explains a lot about how we relate to other people. Is this why, when you're away from "home" you gravitate towards people with similar backgrounds and experiences. Is this a good thing, or are we keeping ourselves from experiencing new things? In my opinion, it also explains that when you just begin to think that you know someone, you learn something new about then and you wonder if you really know them at all. Is it possible for us to really "know" each other, or are we just letting people "know" the person we want them to see. Unless you've known someone since they were, as this author says, learning to walk.....do you ever really understand where they're coming from. And even then, you still don't know every detail.

I just realized that this post sounds like a sociology paper....that really wasn't the point. My point was to share what you can learn by sitting still everyonce in a while and looking at the world from someone else's perspective. To really ask yourself questions you otherwise wouldn't even think of. I guess what I decided was that it is very important to know yourself first......strengths and weaknesses.....resolve yourself to the things you can't change, work on your weaknesses, and celebrate your strengths. If we can't do that for ourselves, how can we ever expect to get to know anyone else?