Sometimes, some­one does some­thing…in char­ac­ter…and this sin­gle act can change my view of them. It’s as if this one thing is the last piece in the puz­zle, and once this hap­pens I fig­ure some­one out com­plete­ly. It’s sad that peo­ple can be so com­pli­cat­ed, and then sud­den­ly so one-dimen­sion­al. I’m not some sort of social genius by any means, but it sur­pris­es me how many times I end up feel­ing as if I know some­one through and through. It’s almost like being able to under­stand the mind of a child.

I think part of the rea­son is because of how many dif­fer­ent peo­ple I’ve been. I see parts of myself in these peo­ple, as so many types of per­son­al­i­ties I’ve had before. Once this hap­pens, a sort of con­nec­tion in my mind is made, and it’s almost as if I under­stand every­thing about them; their motives, their log­ic, their actions. Generally this means that I dis­like the per­son, since I dis­like so many of my past ideas and mind­sets.

I always won­der what it takes for some­one to change so dras­ti­cal­ly to me. With what sin­gle moment do I begin to under­stand some­one? I know that not every­one can be fig­ured out, only those who are relat­ed to what I used to be (which is only a tiny frac­tion of the peo­ple I meet). And yet, fair­ly often, some­one I know will end up being pre­dictable, bor­ing, and frus­trat­ing.

These are the peo­ple I usu­al­ly feel most com­fort­able around, since I know how to talk to them, their humour, what they want to hear, even how they want oth­er peo­ple to act. They’re also the peo­ple I gen­er­al­ly want to hang around the least. They remind me of how igno­rant a per­son I used to be, and offer no inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion (because I usu­al­ly already know every­thing they have say).

There are many more peo­ple I can’t fig­ure out, both ones I like and dis­like. I don’t pro­fess to be smart enough to under­stand any­one, and I cer­tain­ly don’t think that being able to do this makes me a more intel­li­gent per­son. It’s just odd to sud­den­ly come to such under­stand­ings some­times. I instant­ly lose respect for the per­son, and wish I had­n’t got­ten to this point.

In these cas­es it’s prob­a­bly bet­ter to be igno­rant.