It doesn't matter how long or how intimately you know someone. They could be your best friend, or a colleague, a sibling, a parent, a grandparent, a trustworthy confidante, a lover, your beloved spouse. You can never TRULY know them, not entirely. There will always be something that goes unsaid, a hidden desire, a private shame, you do not need me to list the examples. You know them, because you are them. We all are. Philosophers describe these effects as The Other. Hegel used the term "geist," or ghost. Sartre referred to this as "hell." It is the impossible gulf that separates each of us from genuinely and completely understanding the impossibly subjective human experience of another person. Sometimes inciting event that reveals this fact is dramatic. Maybe one of these mysteries is unveiled, shifting the perspective, a diary entry is discovered, a piece of jewelry is lost, an eerie silence at the other end of a phone line. Or it is the quieter, more simple realization, sitting across from each other in a sun-filled breakfast nook, or holding hands across the starchy sheets of a hospital bed that you are staring into the eyes of a total stranger. A total stranger dressed up as Agent Scully from The X-Files. Mom? (Via TheUniblog.)
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