We live in a world of masks, lies, and smokescreens. Knowing the truth about a person can seem almost impossible anymore. Unfortunately as a society we get more and more disconnected. Disconnected from what you ask? Disconnected from everything, or at least everything good. We get more disconnected from each other as humans, we get more disconnected from nature and natural rhythms, we got more disconnected from what is worthy and what is base, we get more disconnected from the better parts of our own humanity. All the while we get more connected to falsehoods and false narratives.
It can make a person go mad if they think too much or too deeply about it. Sometimes you sit down and wonder, how do I know the people I know, as in truly know them. One word that I’ve seen being cheapened lately (there are a lot of them) is family. Everybody is fam, that guy who you’d throw under the bus at the first sign of trouble? He’s your “fam.” The guy that’s banging another guy’s girlfriend or wife or disrespecting his name behind his back calls him “brother”. And so on and so forth. People don’t know each other anymore. Words like “brother” and “family” used to mean something, it meant that you actually knew someone.
Is It Even Possible To Know Someone?
All of this begs that question, is it even possible to know someone? After all you’ll never have access to everyone’s deepest thoughts and desires. You’ll never know everything about a person and therefore it could be said you can never truly know a person. Not someone you served in combat with, not your father, not your brother, not your son, not your wife. Or at least that’s how the reasoning goes. And there’s something to that. After all we can never know all of someone’s thoughts, desires, or feelings. We’ve all had doubts, changes of mind, and darker things pop in our minds and hearts before.
And we know those we love, cherish, and are close with are no different. Granted there’s a big difference between feeling something and acting on it, but the thoughts and feelings can still be there. So, can you actually know a person? After all you’re best friend has had bad thoughts about you before, so has your wife, children, parents, and everyone else around you and most likely you about them. Granted that doesn’t mean you can’t trust each other, it just means relationships and “knowing” someone is a very complicated topic. But again, like a great many things, I think this comes to definitions.
For all intents and purposes I would say that you can know someone, which I’ll talk about here shortly. However if by know you mean know every thought and desire that person has ever had then the obvious answer is no, you can never know someone truly. But I would say you don’t need to. You don’t need to know every thought or desire to trust and know someone. There is another way to tell if a person is worthy, of trust, love, and a great many other things. There is a way for them to reveal the core of who they are. Which while never perfect can still be trustworthy.
How To Know Someone’s Innermost Being
While you might not be able to know the ins and outs of a person’s soul, you can get a broad picture, and that’ll you really need to make a decision about that person and how they do, or don’t, fit into your life. And to understand this we need to talk about what reveals character, what reveals who and what someone truly is at their core. Not what their veneer or mask says they are but who they actually are on a deep level. Masks and smokescreens are made to be deceiving and it can be surprising what you find.
Those who seem big and tough turn out to be gutless cowards. The unassuming quiet person ends up being the strong leader. The goody good person ends up being corrupt and without character. And so on and so forth. How to grasp someone’s true character was something I was taught young, but forgot somewhere in my subconscious, recently I came across the same advice for revealing character in fiction. Essentially if you want to know the truth about someone if you want to know their true character it’ll be shown to you went that person is put under pressure, especially immense pressure.
Granted this doesn’t mean interrogating people to figure them out. It means going through hardship with people will give you a glimpse, sometimes deep, of who they are and what they’re made out of. If you’ve never seen someone under pressure or been under pressure with them, it’s going to very hard to have a true idea of who and what they are. And in the modern world there can often be times where no true great pressure is being put on someone. You’ll likely never be standing back to back with someone, with your lives on the line, but you can still catch glimpses when other times of pressure are put on.
The Crucible Of Pressure
If you’ve never gone through any sort of pressure with someone then you don’t know them and they don’t know you and that’s just a fact. If you and your “boys” have never so much as been in a fight together then you don’t know them and they’re not your “boys”. They’re essentially random guys you hang out with and that’s it. You’re sure as hell not brothers and are disrespecting the name by ever calling each other that. Same with “fam” or other similar words. You want to know someone? Then go through hell with them and you’ll figure out who they are. Pressure reveals character.
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-Charles Sledge
