During our weekly Marsh Associates meeting on Monday evening, Soren asked us to try an exercise. We took a field trip to the law school building and went to the Law School Cafe. Our assignment, on the surface, was simple: find a place to sit down, observe someone for ten minutes, and see what we could learn about them.
I decided to observe a pair of women who were sitting across from each other. As they chatted over open books and laptops, I started asking myself a few questions: Who are these two people? Friends? Roommates? Classmates? How did they meet for the first time? From the smiles I glimpsed on one of their faces, they seemed to be relatively close. Between glances at books and laptops they laughed as they talked. Perhaps they were classmates who were preparing for an upcoming exam. Although I couldn’t hear what they said, the conversation seemed to flow naturally.
Those were some of the details that I was able to observe. The depth of these two women’s lives, however, extends far beyond what I could simply see in that short period of time. Each one of them presumably has her own life, deep with experiences, perspectives, and thoughts. Perhaps they were thinking about whatever it was they had to do the next day. Perhaps they were just enjoying the moment, casually talking about some shared story or event. Or maybe they were wondering why some random person was watching them from several feet away, as I myself was probably being watched by some other people.
There is an idea in philosophy called solipsism, the idea that what one experiences is all that can be known to exist. In other words, what we see, think, perceive, and experience is all that we know of ourselves and the world around us. I don’t particularly agree with this point of view. We constantly pass by people each day who have meaningful life stories, and an inner life probably as rich and complex as our own. Just because we can’t see that doesn’t mean it does not exist.
I may not have been able to learn the life stories of the two women I saw a few nights ago. That’s a tall order for someone who’s known a person even for a long time, let alone ten minutes. The small details that I was able to perceive, though, gave some room for imagination about what these people’s lives are like. The act of observation gives room for imagination, which can ultimately help us brush against the depth of other people’s lives. That is a skill worth practicing. While this exercise may have been awkward and uncomfortable to do, it helped me better appreciate the fact that we are not alone with our thoughts in this world. It brought me just a little closer to breaking through the looking glass into another person’s life.