Inpursuitof

Isn’t it funny to think that all the people you know are actually people? Think about a friend of yours, or the person sitting next to you, but don’t look at them. You can see their face in your head, but try thinking distinctly about the features. Bit fuzzy? I’ll bet you a fiver the next time you see them they don’t look the same as you think, not really. 

The brain is so busy with other things that when you know someone well enough, it stops seeing them properly. Instead, you get a photoshopped amalgamation of every time you’ve been with them. It does with their personalities too. I bet that when you thought of them, you saw all the associated memories, their laugh, the regular patterns of your interaction with them, the false bottom to a drawer of a person. You come to subconsciously expect that they are Schrödinger’s cat, that their past, their thoughts, their existence even, is made solely from what you know of them. Your brain makes the assumption that they have and will always follow the rules of behaviour that it has observed. Your brain is, after all, only a computer, and a computer can only make assumptions based on what it has been told. Try thinking of a friend or colleague that you have only ever known to be happily married, and then imagine that they have sat in their bedroom at some point in their lives, listening to sad songs with a broken heart. It seems odd, but I can guarantee it’s happened. 

One of my favourite places is a service station on an A road somewhere that spans the carriageway. Sitting on that bridge, I like to look at the cars and remember that in each of those cars is a driver, and each of those drivers has a whole world I will never know anything about. My brain struggles with it every time and goes back to seeing cars on a motorway. It’s much easier.

1) CTG

2) some sugar free sweets

3) A woman in Soho Square