Does anybody really know you? It’s a question that arises at odd moments—sometimes, perversely, when we’re surrounded by people who know us well. Suddenly, we become conscious of an inner sanctum they’ve never breached. We might perceive ourselves as lost, abandoned, as though we’re passing through the world unnoticed. We feel many variations of a central theme: others sail to our shores, they even disembark, but they never quite venture into our unexplored interiors. This can be a source of sorrow, or a relief. You may feel that you’re unknown because of your nature, your circumstances, or your story. But the feeling itself, for all its intuitiveness, conceals some strangeness. What, exactly, is there to know?
In Joshua Rothman’s latest column, he argues that the question “Does anybody really know you?” is too narrow and rigid, with a passive construction that belies reality. “Other people help us to know ourselves, working with us to create a shared idea of who we are,” Joshua Rothman writes. “So, instead of asking whether we are known, it may be more fruitful to ask whether we’ve arrived, in collaboration with people we care about, at a conception of ourselves that we recognize.” Read about why our yearning to be fully known is inevitable—and, perhaps, misleading: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/O1VOKJ
Eyecatching 