NORMAL PEOPLE. - by Nonso Obi

We are remarkably good at pretending we know people. A man walks into a room wearing an expensive watch, and before he's said a word, we've already decided something about him. A girl sits alone at the back of the bus, headphones on, staring through the window. Shy, maybe. Or arrogant. Or just tired of being looked at. We don't know. We've never spoken to her. But the brain doesn't wait for an invitation, it fills the gap anyway, fast and confident, as if a theory formed in five seconds were the same thing as knowledge. We cannot assume to know a person's history from their face, and yet we do it constantly, quietly, almost on instinct. Clothes become character. An accent becomes a whole biography. A smile becomes proof that someone is glad to see us. There's a comfort in believing people make sense from the outside, that twenty seconds of looking can reveal the architecture of a person. It's efficient. You meet someone and file them away: friendly, rude, sharp, dull, dangerous, kind. What we're actually doing is mistaking a guess for a fact, and building an entire relationship to that guess, sometimes without ever correcting it. The man's watch might have taken him years to afford, because it was his father's. The quiet girl might not be arrogant at all, she might be terrified of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. The one who talks too much may be starving for company. The one who says almost nothing may be carrying a whole weather system behind the eyes. None of this is visible from across a room. It only becomes visible up close, in conversation, over time, which is exactly the part we usually skip. <img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000223186.png"/> Anne Frank wrote that you only really get to know a person after a fight, that only then can you judge their true character. It's a strange thing to say, but it points at something true: character doesn't announce itself at first glance. It shows up in the unglamorous business of actually being around someone long enough for the performance to crack. And most of us never get that far. We sit beside strangers on buses and trains as if the few inches between us explained anything at all, then we walk away having learned nothing and having decided everything. Tomorrow, someone will look at you and build a small story out of your clothes, your voice, the way you walk past. They'll never test it. They'll never know if they were right. And you'll do the same to someone else before lunch. The only way out of that guessing game is proximity, actual conversation, actual time, the unglamorous work of getting close enough that the guessing stops being necessary. Everything short of that is just a story we tell ourselves about a stranger, dressed up as understanding. We have buses to catch. But maybe, once in a while, we could get off one stop early and actually talk to the person next to us.<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000223188.png"/> Anne Frank's original quote:" Anyhow, I've learned one thing, now. You only get to know people after you've had a jolly good row with them, then and then only can you judge their true characters" Monday, September 28, 1942. The Diary of a young girl. I've been trying to talk to people more, to actually get to know them rather than deciding who they are from the outside. I'm not perfect at it, but I think it's a better way of understanding people than judging them from a distance - Me.

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