“Does anybody really know you?” might be too narrow, or too rigid, a question, with a passive construction that belies reality. Like Schrödinger’s cat, we may not settle into any particular way of being until someone studies us. Other people help us to know ourselves, working with us to create a shared idea of who we are. So, instead of asking whether we are known, it may be more fruitful to ask whether we’ve arrived, in collaboration with people we care about, at a conception of ourselves that we recognize.
[…]
“Why can he not allow the woman of his dreams to enter his dream?” Cavell asks. The answer, he thinks, is that “to walk in the direction of one’s dream is necessarily to risk the dream.” If Peter and Ellie are to really know one another, they have to merge dreams and reality. This is like “putting together night and day.” It’s scary.
Joshua Rothman, New Yorker, 2024.
