I personally think that I know a lot about my life; the things that I’m most sure of are what I build my axioms (fundamental statements or rules accepted as true without proof) off of. I assume that I’ll get up in the morning tomorrow, that if I want my hand to move that it’ll move, and that if I think something while my mouth moves, then I’ll probably say it. Everything else works out through a sort of system of proof: if I'm sure that when I want to speak I’ll say something, and that another person is listening, then I probably shouldn’t say anything mean. Simple stuff, really.
Come to notice that these proofs don’t work the same, neat way that a mathematical one might, probably due to the massive leaps in logic each step takes. But to reconcile that 2 related things being true does not always produce a third, emergent thing can sometimes be off-putting, which finally brings this column to something substantial. To what limits have you pushed your axioms, and to what extent do you invent what you think is real?
No one’s an exception to this behavior. Many times have I found myself intrigued by someone on the surface level, connecting what little points of reference in a web of educated guesswork, only for one conversation to absolutely shatter the image of them that I had. Many times have I written people off, only to be pleasantly surprised by the things that came out of their mouth. The surprise isn’t really about the jarring event itself, but more so due to the fact that up until those points in my life, I had invented a part of my reality to live. Something, somewhere in my mind was completely false, but I had built a mental model that suggested the behavior would occur. I never bothered to examine it until reality rudely knocked the theory from my mind.
How many of those exist right now, undiscovered in my worldview? How many will never be discovered; what corners of the world will I (or rather we) write off as explored that simply have been? I’ve been going to this school for 3 years, and still when I walk with new people they show me angles from which I’ve never seen it before almost every day.
Much of it could come down to categorization. What’s conniving is that living by categorizing is such an efficient way to live; seeing one thing gives you a reasonable idea of what other such things might look like. If you see enough things that fit a label, one might be compelled to think that they know the label. Everything falls under at least one label, life, which might compel one to think that they know a lot about it. Fortunately, nobody does, and every so often comes a reminder, complementary with whatever package you chose to enter it with.