Almost No Memory

A FRIEND OF MINE

I am thinking about a friend of mine, how she is not only what she believes she is, she is also what friends believe her to be, and what her family believes her to be, and even what she is in the eyes of chance acquaintances and total strangers. About certain things, her friends have one opinion and she has another. She thinks, for instance, that she is overweight and not as well educated as she should be, but her friends know she is perfectly thin and better educated than most of us. About other things she agrees, for instance that she is amusing in company, likes to be on time, likes other people to be on time, and is not orderly in her housekeeping. Perhaps it must be true that the things about which we all agree are part of what she really is, or what she really would be if there were such a thing as what she really is, because when I look for what she really is, I find only contradictions everywhere: even when she and her friends all agree about something, this thing may not seem correct to a chance acquaintance, who may find her sullen in company or her rooms very neat, for instance, and will not be entirely wrong, since there are times when she is dull, and times when she keeps a neat house, though they are not the same times, for she will not be neat when she is feeling dull.

All this being true of my friend, it occurs to me that I must not know altogether what I am, either, and that others know certain things about me better than I do, though I think I ought to know all there is to know and I proceed as if I do. Even once I see this, however, I have no choice but to continue to proceed as if I know altogether what I am, though I may also try to guess, from time to time, just what it is that others know that I do not know.