There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart
The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
It's so hard to truly know a person. Rather than getting to know them, we're more prone to get to know ourselves better. We learn more about ourselves through the people we meet. We learn new things by relating them to things we already know. The same is true for people. We understand people better when we understand ourselves better, when we're better able to relate to them. That's why they're called relationships.
It's difficult to truly know a person. I'm not sure that we ever really do. I think it might be more accurate to say we get ideas about people. We construct images of them in our minds based on what we know and the little bits we understand. We imagine them to be some sort of way.
He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock
Part of it is our own fallacy. We misunderstand things and have faulty perceptions. Sometimes we expect to see something, and that's what we see. If we expect someone to be hostile, the most innocuous look can seem abrasive. If we expect someone to be charitable, the simplest gesture can seem excessively significant.
But part of is their fault. In fact, it's usually their faults that they are trying to hide. We don't see others for who they are because they don't really want us to, just as we don't show people who we really are because we don't want them to see us. There are parts of us we would all like to keep hidden. We don't want people to see us, we only want them to see part of us and assume it's our entirety.
We would rather people only see our best selves as our whole selves. We would rather they don't actually know us but keep that idea of us, that ideal of us, that they hold. We want to hold onto it just as they do. Sometimes imagination is better than reality. It's more simple. It might be less beautiful, but they say that beauty is pain and sometimes it's just too painful.
As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness
People disappoint. Through no fault of their own, people will disappoint us. In fact, it's often the greatest people who disappoint us the most. They're the ones whom we hold in such high esteem, to such high standards. Of others, we ask and expect nothing or very little. But of those who are great, we expect everything. And no one can be our everything
Photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash