We're all Elinor sometimes.

[mrissa]

Earlier this week pegkerr was talking about her Elinor Dashwood mode, where she doesn't talk about the things bothering her, but very lightly and carefully talks around them when she talks at all. In a coincidence of timing, I was having an e-mail conversation with a friend about things he did not know had been going on some months ago. And what I ended up wanting to say is this:

Always assume that there is more going on in someone's life, interior or exterior, than you know.

Always.

No, really, always.

The people you live with count for this. The people you live with whose age is in the single-digits or measured in months: they still count for this. Because they will pop out with something you had no idea they had been working on or mulling over until all of a sudden there it is. This is why small children can still startle us with their questions; it's why we can still talk to our partners after years together. We never know every last thing going on with another person. We couldn't, and we shouldn't. Anyone who has someone who knows everything they're thinking about needs to do some more thinking.

This is not exclusively negative. I don't mean that everyone has things bothering them in the inner recesses of their own head, necessarily. I just mean that it's a good idea to keep in mind that we don't always know everything we think we know.

You know?

Comments

[jenett]

Have you ever heard my theory of my subconscious? It might amuse you, given the above.

I've had a theory, since sometime in college, that my subconscious is rather like that scene of the generals trying to figure out what to do in the Star Wars Death Star.

Sometimes, they're back there, and they send up regular memos and orders and instructions about what's going on, and how to make it work.

Sometimes, one of them gets abruptly strangled for no good reason, and it takes some time to figure out the work around.

And some days, they order out for pizza and a movie (or, for longer "We're sorry: no one in your subconscious is available at this time. Please leave a message, and we'll get back to you. Eventually.", they order out for Chinese and a Lord of the Rings marathon.)

Those, I hate, because I have no idea what's going on in the back of my head, until they emerge with a new plan. But I cope, partly because I've figured out how help get them through the planning process faster, even when I have no idea what they're actually doing.

It's a rather weird way of thinking of my own brain, but the weirdness also seems to help me cope with the lack of useful data from back there.