How many people have ever thought about the incomprehensible secret that lies in the words «another person»?
Any person is different, even the most dear and close, because he is not me. So I don’t know about him what I know about myself. What’s more, there’s a lot I’ll never know. Can I find out anything at all? Much depends, of course, on the goodwill of the Other: it is one thing if he wants to open up and tell about himself, another if he closes himself. But, even if there is good will and movement towards it, the Other cannot tell everything about himself: he does not know much about himself.
It has long been said that it is much easier to know a person in general than a specific one. We are trying to extend to other people the laws of behavior we have deduced from our own experience or read in books and thus make others understandable, predictable. It is important for us to believe in this, even if it is an illusion — otherwise there will be uncertainty and anxiety in the relationship, which few people can endure without traumatic consequences. And to some extent, sometimes it succeeds. And even more often we suggest to ourselves that everything is under control and the Other behaves as we expected, although in reality this is far from being the case.
The thinner, inner richer, more complex the human soul, the more utopian the task of understanding it becomes. There is only one way to understand something about another person — to enter into a dialogue with him. Dialogue is not necessarily words, there can be gestures, touches, actions (an ironed shirt, a cup of coffee in bed, favorite food prepared with care or unloved one casually prepared … — all these are replicas in the dialogue). Any dialogue proceeds from the recognition that the interlocutor is Another (and therefore I cannot know in advance his response remarks-actions), and also that a living person is changing (and therefore there is no guarantee that today he will be the same as yesterday) .
I can only try to reveal myself, not be afraid to be myself even in what I myself do not quite understand about myself, be open to how the Other manifests himself, humbly recognizing the limitations of my ability to understand him, and each time trying to look for confirmation even more. what I know about him, perhaps a very long time ago.
There is only one way to understand something about another — this is to enter into a dialogue with him.
Dialogue is always going beyond the boundaries of oneself into outer space — the space of another person. Dialogue cannot take place if a person is not ready to be himself or is sure that the interlocutor has nothing to say that he does not know. But if the dialogue takes place, then only it gives a chance to understand something about each other. As the great philosopher Merab Mamardashvili said, it is impossible, but it happens.