Chameleonic, Stand-Alone, Hide-and-Seek Games...

People are puzzling. I'm coming to the realisation that the most difficult task I will ever face in my life will not be finding myself, getting an education, getting a job, aiming to achieve the unattainable; it will be building that world around those who inhabit it alongside me.

Which is a problem, because people are puzzling.

The whole world of human relations is built around politics, a system of what-I-can-get-from-this-encounter which is certainly not necessarily a self-centred consideration. You get something from everybody you come in contact with (good or bad, significant or unnoticed), and you give to them (good or bad, significant or unnoticed). Unless you have your reward clearly defined and you expect to get it from a particluar person or group of people, you will barely notice the give and take of the circles you move in. (So, you may pass appreciated yet quietly through the lives of your closest friends, and dramatically change the life course of the person you talked to at the bus stop who never even knew your name. The person who made the most difference to my life (which of course is another story) doesn't know that a few minutes' conversation in a carpark after class had any lasting effect on me whatsoever.)

People behave appropriately to their situation and play toward what they want from their encounters. You'll notice it most when you see workmates on weekends or friends with their families. Part protocol, part social interest; usually fascinating, in my opinion. Problem is, I'm constantly looking at people and wondering, what don't I know?

In public, anyone you're not talking to is an enigma. Faces stay closed and there is nothing to suggest what hides behind them - more than once I've sat next to a stranger on the bus considering that most people are perfectly normal and happy to talk if you're willing to open a conversation, but until they speak they are an unknown quantity. So maybe it's the same for people that you've known your whole life, and you can't truly say you know them until you've started every conversation possible and have heard all their points of view.

I don't think anyone truly shows themselves, every side, to any single other person. They can't. People scatter themselves amongst their families, friends, acquaintances and strangers like confetti, a jigsaw where some pieces fall connected and other pieces are lost forever. Somebody you think you know well will always, always be able to find a way to take you by surprise, assuming that the right circumstances come your way. Who knows, in the right circumstances you may find that you don't really know yourself...

The advantages? No one you know is a static, boring, predictable human continuum. Everybody, yourself included, has the potential to become something else, provided you have the courage to exchange one mask you wear for another.

The downside?

You can't expect to ever know somebody else completely; you can only know the masks they show to you. And ultimately, the only person who will ever come within shouting distance of you, is yourself. Surround yourself with whatever and whomever you may, you will always be alone.

But that's the way it goes, I guess. :)