By TJ Ray

Columnist

 

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present.  There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”

Recently in an email exchange with a friend, she alluded to someone we both had known.  Her comments about him were laudatory, so much so that I paused to consider her words.  Thinking back to my dealings with the fellow, I was surprised that anyone could speak so glowingly of him.  I couldn’t stand being in a room with him.

As the little quote that began this essay points out quite well, we may all go about life in three personas.  Sorting out what the essence of a person is may be beyond our ever achieving.  The stimulus for at least two of them is that one of us looks through our own eyes and judges matters from that limited perspective whereas other folks see us through their eyes.  

Should we, then, be surprised that our opinion of ourselves and our actions may not always square with how others see them?

Often two individuals may respond to a situation differently because we know more or less about the actual actors in the scene.  Not long back I read an email exchange that disturbed me.  

An old friend sent a note to someone that I thought was quite mundane and in order.  The response that followed was quite critical of him for having sent the email.  As a member of the group that both of them are part of, I made a comment about the exchange to another group member.  His response was to the effect that the original speaker (email author) was way off base and a bit offensive for sending his message while the response he got was appropriate.

Here is a case in which my being a friend of one of the two parties and the other guy being good friends with  —  Let me stop trying to sort this out.  Being friends with an individual is likely to put up my guard when that person is “attacked.”  Clearly that is what went on in this rhubarb.

In our complex digital world, identities and realities about people get more complicated because all we have at times to flesh out their portrait are words.  And we are not privy to the words they may use in a closer circle of familiarity, say with a child or a spouse.  

One of the odd details of my computer—in particular my address book—are the names of acquaintances who have left our world.  People I never met, though I did have occasion once or twice to talk to them by phone, one in California, the other in Ohio.  

From their words alone came my impression of them, in time strong enough to think of them both as friends.  I have no doubt that mentioning my name to either one would have elicited quite different comments than if they were Oxford acquaintances.

Someone asked me why I keep their names in my address book, and I say that it is a nice way to recall their friendship, sort of like looking through old yearbooks.  Reunions are magical in that they overlay another identity on the person we knew oh so long ago.  Ron and Bobby don’t look a bit like they did in 1956.  And I could never have guessed the professions each would pursue.

Allow me one more observation about identity.  As we are introduced to new folks, we find things we like or things we don’t care for about them.  If there is an abundance of positives, we in time consider them friends, from then on sharing our lives with theirs.  

No, we don’t take a vow that we will be buddies till death do us part, but we also don’t anticipate a time when we are not friends.  

One of us moves—perhaps simply into a different social group in town.  If the move is from an old town to a new, we may make phone calls every once in a while.  The first Christmas or two following a move, we likely send a Christmas card.  At some point in time, we become so involved with the folks around us now that we gradually forget the ones from before.  Have you ever tried to think of the name of a classmate from seventy years ago?  Good luck with that!

Our view of those people from long ago softens over the years—like the sands of time have worn off their hard edges.  And as T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock says, “There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet. . . .”