Now imagine their life
How to see others as the main character
Most people look boring on the outside. And the ones who look exceptional on the outside we expect to be boring on the inside, as if they can’t see any farther into themselves than us.
Now let me flip that.
I look boring. If I look exceptional people assume there is more to my outside than my inside. I just go around looking driven by my monkey brain.
Say that about yourself. What utter bullshit, am I right?
So, unless everyone else is a philosophical zombie, how can we update our thinking to include other people’s humanity? Not just their happiness or suffering units, but they, them, us?
There was an American Independence day celebration here in Oslo this Sunday. It’s a mish mash of events. People trying to sell you food, others drumming up enthusiasm for baseball and softball, or sharing a tent with a life-sized cut-out of Donald Trump (read the room). There was face painting, pony rides, Norwegians singing nostalgic American rock, square dancing, and showing off their excellent american classic cars.
In one corner of the field, surprisingly close to the stage, is the American Woman’s Club of Oslo. I don’t know much about them, I suspect that they are/once were connected to the American Lutheran Church (didn’t they have a stand once upon a time?), but they are very friendly and they sell excellent cookies that are far too popular for people like us who tend to come a little late.
To the right of the cookies is pitched the most interesting tent, the used book tent. You do not need to read to be interesting, but what you read says a lot about what you spend time thinking about. If you read, you probably won’t read more than 20 books a year. Thats 200 in a decade. For my my choice of book can be impulsive at times, but a book usually represents what I am enthusiastic about, and I think you can see a lot about what I spend time thinking about from my bookshelves.
When we make it to this party in the park, I always go straight to the books. I love spending money on books, it’s the best and I wish books were more expensive so that when I say buying books is a guilty indulgence, people would actually agree with me so that my admission wouldn’t just be a disguise for my guilt for my own enthusiasm.
Books excite me. Used books that are not anonymously deposited at a store, but are tied to certain people at a certain place, they get me going. Books with context, with past owners and readers, tell more stories than those without.
The books in the green cases, the cardboard boxes, lying on their sides, on their spines, on their pages, tucked under the table, under each other, they all show an inner life that we don’t always see. Not just of the author, but of the reader.
Perhaps ‘to see’ is the wrong verb here. I am sure if I looked more closely I could see more of people, but what lies in people’s minds does not often lie evident on their chests. Most of us look like clothed bodies reacting to our environments, shaped by years and years of routine, tradition, and social norms.
The worried faces, the people concerned about dinner, about TV, about the traffic-they do not show what is going on in the mind. We all, to most other people, look dull.
We do not judge, or at least we do not judge often. That requires an act of imagination. In fact, when I say people look dull, it’s because I don’t use the energy to imagine who they are. To know someone requires an act of imagination, an act of intuition that costs. To do it with one person a week is impressive, to do it for a whole room of humans at the same time might very well be impossible.
But when is the last time you looked directly at someone and imagined their inner life?
And when I say imagine, I do not mean draw a caricature. Take a look at them, listen to what they say, think about what they have said. Go on, be honest.
Why do they look tired today? Why do they look happy today? You are probably going to be wrong, but empathy requires imagination and imagination requires effort. Go on, look! What is so exciting about them? Why are they loved? What are their mitigating circumstances?
It can be really hard to be upset with someone when you imagine them. Most people dont like being an assohole. Yes , there are some people, but most people don’t like to feel bad. Often people don’t even realize that they feel bad.
If people aren’t behaving in the way they want to, then they are probably acting in a way that they feel they have to. When you see what people think, you tend to have sympathy for them, even if they are unpleasant.
So in some ways, looking at people is to turn the other cheek. This is not to say that you should allow yourself to be abused, I don’t suggest that either. Don’t let toxic people leech your energy and self. Energy vampires are real and you should avoid them.
Not only does imagining people help make you kinder, it can also be a wonderful, almost sensual surprise. Digging around in the biographies I came across Palimpsest, Gore Vidal’s memoir. Stopped me straight in my tracks. I haven’t see Gore Vidal on anyone’s bookshelf since I moved to Norway. To see it in a crate dumped by someone who was most likely an American Woman in Norway stopped me straight in my tracks. I felt like a laser dot had suddenly appeared on my chest. I wanted to look up, look into the eyes around me and find out, who the hell had gore vidal sitting up in their heads? Who hadn’t I seen, but now seen through their books?
No one around me looked like Vidal. There was one woman with red driving shoes and an american flag-themed broach, but of course I judged her harshly (and I think she judged the American Woman in Norway harshly), and only think of her know as I write this.
I didn’t actually ask anyone about the book, I just bought. I had, though, learned something about a stranger, a stranger I never would have thought twice about if they had even handed me 20 dollars. I saw, had proof, of an inner life I knew nothing about. Something probably extraordinary, even though life is so ordinary.
So next time someone seems boring, imagine them.
