the falseness of intimacy
recently i have spent a lot of time wondering how much we really know other people.
sometime i think i really know other people, understand other people, think i have other people figured out.
and then i realize, that I don't have myself figured out, not to mention everyone else.
and that is painful.
the shocking realization that i thought i knew this person, thought i was close to this person.
nope. i know some THINGS about them. maybe i know their favorite ice-cream color, their middle name, their opinion on the final chapters of Flaubert's Sentimental Education.
One of my favorite books is "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck and one of its main ideas is that "Love is Seperateness". Basically that despite all your attempts to understand and be understood, the painful reality of life is that we are all seperate people with seperate ideas and seperate almost everything. No matter how close we really feel to another human being, part of it is an illusion. You never really know or understand another living being.
I'm not sure i'll ever be able to fully accept that. I like the illusion, when it lasts.