Infamously Unknown

I was talking to a friend recently and he was telling me about how people he had never met knew all about him. Or at least they thought they knew about him. He was encountering people who had heard all sorts of things about him from others who thought they knew him; it was said that he was a troublemaker, a party crazed student, an all around bad kid. He admitted that some of the presuppositions that people held about him stemmed from some truth, but the worst of it was just ignorance on their part. His name carried a reputation that he couldn't seem to shake. I couldn't help but think about the day I met him. I had actually heard only good things about him, though few: really nice guy, good person. I let the one day that I met him change my mind completely. He didn't meet the great expectations I had for him so I started thinking the opposite about him. At that point is when I also started hearing worse things about him. I let the few times when his name and something not-so-great were mentioned in the same sentence shape my perception of him.

I do this way too often. When we know little or nothing about someone, even if it is good, we soon let what bad we hear rewrite who they are. Sometimes what we hear is true, and people say what they say for a reason, but why have we let what others say change our minds? We let what we hear get to our heads, and we decide what kind of person everyone is, and then we are thrown off when we get to know that person and they don't match up with what we decided was true. Because it wasn't true. Don't let it become an absolute until you've seen it proven to be so.

Maybe we should get our faces out of other people's lives and stop deciding with our ignorant and biased brains who they are. I know, I know, we're all just so smart, we have very discerning minds, we just know this stuff. But really, do you really know that much? No, you don't, and I don't. I will never know enough, learn enough, or understand enough to justifiably decide what someone is like before getting to know them. So why don't we just stop wasting our time and their time by thinking about them and who we believe they are. Don't think about it, just let them walk into your life, spend some time there, and leave the mark that they made, not the one you set up for them before they showed up.

And.. and and and what right do we have to even think so critically, analytically and decisively about people? First off, can I just say how creepy that sounds? You're laying in bed at night or something less weird, and you spend how much time thinking about this person trying to figure them out. Second, it's not your life to be calling shots-stop trying to figure out their crap when you've got enough of your own to share. C of all, spend your time and the little brain juice you've got to think about things that make you better, smarter, or just less creepy. And for quarts, you're not in control of most of what happens around and to you, so you look for it elsewhere, well let me tell you, as soon as you decide something about someone, your control will be lost because they will change your mind or change themselves.

and sierra's corner of nonsense, or whatever I called it, is back for a moment.
I know you, I know you, I know you so well. The words that linger leave traces of dirt, I trust them to tell me your story. You've no way to see what's said, you've been gone as your name's been built around the life of an absent man. The frame of words walks before you, but you don't wear his shoes. You're one step off, one step above the man that carries your name and dirties your face. He reached inside to scratch a soul, but you've got it on hold and he is clawing at the spaces between the words he's written.