The side we don't see

Once we get a certain age, I’ve noticed there are things we do not tell people about ourselves. I would suspect that each and every one of my peers at school has stories and hidden talents that no one on campus knows about. I remember in elementary school, it felt as if everyone knew everything about everyone. Oh yes, this person did this over the summer, met this person, had Christmas dinner with this person, this person accidentally spilled chocolate milk on his shirt etc. Elementary school seemed to be those years where we seemed to share everything about ourselves and about our families to all our classmates. People didn’t bother as much with the details; most people were too preoccupied sharing their own stories to listen to others. 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed how more and more people I’m friends with have secret talents, secrets, and niches to their personalities that I had only found out recently. For example, one of my friends in my French class has already done two triathlons…and when I sit there in class, I never knew that about him! Or my other friend in my fitness class who runs an energy drink business with his brother. I had dinner with one of my closest friends at school last night, and she told me that she’d published a research paper last summer. When I heard this, it blew my mind. One of my closest friends had done research and published a paper in physics! What’s mutual about these examples I’ve mentioned is that their hidden aspects of people I would have never recognized at a first glance, or even after being friends with them for a while (over a year), only now have I found out about their inner selves, the people they are outside of academics, or off campus. 

There’s this adage: people are not how they appear to be on the outside. I suppose for a while I never believed that saying, maybe because I was still young. When I was younger, I believed everyone would tell me everything. But as I’m beginning to experience now, most people I’m going to meet are truly very interesting people. Most have stories and histories few people know about because people chose to keep it hidden. That’s something I didn’t pick up before. And the amazing thing is: if I just stop and open my ears, I’ll probably learn something interesting.