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How Others See Us
Why we can’t assume our internals are perceived externally
As best as I can tell from my sixty years on this astonishing planet, most people want to be seen for who they are and appreciated for who they are.
For some, this is a fruitless quest. I mean, there’s so little to a creature like Trump that not only do we see him in his abjectly inadequate entirety, but also there’s zero chance of anyone with more than no functioning neurons in their frontal cortex appreciating him except perhaps as a way to frighten impressionable young amoeba (as in “if you don’t start evolving soon, little amoeba, you’ll regress until you’re nothing but a Trump”).
But for most of us, the vast majority of people who have some good elements and some not-so-good elements, we have characteristics and behaviors that redeem us at least much of the time and make us worth knowing.
Unfortunately, as best as I can tell, for the most part other people see us only in slices. The box in the illustration below represents (a few of) someone’s characteristics.
Everyone in that person’s life sees one or two slices but no one sees the complete picture. And even when we evince a…
