Episode 56: Everyone Has a File on You

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I was reading restaurant reviews recently and realized I always check the date. A bad review from last week? I’m paying attention. A bad review from 2012? I’m sorry, Linda. I know you hated the clam chowder, but I’m going to need something a little more recent.

A lot can change in fourteen years.

The review might have been completely true when Linda wrote it. The chowder might have been terrible. The service might have been worse. But restaurants change owners, hire new people, rewrite menus, and figure things out. At some point, an old review stops telling us very much about what we’ll experience if we walk through the door today.

It made me wonder how often we remember to do the same thing with people.

We’re all carrying around years of information about the people we know. We remember who showed up when we needed them, who canceled at the last minute, who kept a secret, who absolutely did not keep a secret, and who made a hard season a little easier. We collect these experiences without even realizing we’re doing it, and eventually they become part of what we believe about someone.

In a way, we’re building files on each other.

Everyone has a file on you. And you have one on them too.

That sounds much creepier than I mean it, but stay with me.

The Files We Carry

Spend enough time with someone and you start to know what to expect. If a friend has shown up every single time they said they would, you trust that they’ll probably show up again. If they’ve canceled the last six times, you might not put your shoes on until you see their car in the driveway.

History matters because patterns tell us things. Trust is built through experience, and there’s a reason we don’t completely ignore what someone has shown us in the past.

The strange part is how easily we can forget to check the date on some of that information.

There are people I formed opinions about ten or twenty years ago. If you asked me exactly what happened, I might not even be able to give you the whole story anymore. I might not remember what was said, where we were, or what was happening in that person’s life at the time.

But somehow, the verdict survived.

The details can disappear while the conclusion sticks around.

Of course, that means the same thing is happening in the other direction. There are people walking around with versions of me in their heads that I haven’t been in years. Twenty-years-ago Jody is still living in someone’s file. Some of what they remember about her is probably still accurate. Some of it I really hope isn’t.

We Don’t All Have the Same File

Here’s another strange part of this. Five people can know the same person and have five completely different experiences of them.

Think about your own life. One friend might describe you as outgoing while another sees you as pretty private. Someone at work might swear you’re ridiculously organized while a family member has seen the inside of your car and would like to present evidence to the contrary.

None of them necessarily has it wrong. They’ve experienced different parts of you.

My kids know a version of me my coworkers never will. Someone who knew me in my twenties remembers things about me that a person I met last year never experienced. The same is true for every person I know.

That changes the way I look at saying, “I know what that person is like.”

What I really know is what that person has been like with me.

That’s a much smaller claim.

It also explains why reputations and labels can be so powerful. We save people in our mental contact lists the same way we save them in our phones. I guarantee there is someone in my contacts named something like “Mike Plumber” who hasn’t been a plumber in ten years. Mike could own a bakery by now. It doesn’t matter. He’s Mike Plumber forever.

We do it to people too. She’s the responsible one. He’s quiet. She’s difficult. He’s unreliable. Sometimes those labels come from our own experiences, and sometimes we inherit them before we’ve even met the person.

Someone tells us, “Oh, you’re going to love her,” and we arrive expecting to love her. Someone says, “Good luck,” and suddenly we’re wondering what we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The file can start forming before we’ve collected any information of our own.

What Happens When Someone Changes?

This is where the whole thing gets harder.

What happens when someone stops matching the file?

Maybe someone who has always been unreliable starts showing up. The first time, we notice. The second time, we’re still skeptical. But if they keep showing up, eventually there’s a real question sitting there: When does the new pattern get to count?

I don’t know that there’s one answer.

History matters. Patterns matter. If someone has hurt us repeatedly, one good day doesn’t erase everything that came before it. Sometimes waiting for more information is completely reasonable. Wanting someone to have changed can make us update the file too quickly too.

There is a big difference, though, between saying, “I need more information,” and deciding that nothing someone does will ever change our minds about them.

One leaves room. The other doesn’t.

I believe people can change. I also think believing that in theory can be much easier than recognizing it when someone we already know starts doing it. Sometimes the person changes before our opinion of them does. They keep showing us something new while we keep waiting for the old version to come walking back through the door.

How long should we wait before we believe the new pattern? I don’t know. I’m not sure there’s a universal line.

I just think it’s worth noticing whether we’ve left a line at all.

Maybe We Recalculate

I keep coming back to GPS because it handles new information remarkably well. You miss a turn and it recalculates. That’s it. It doesn’t spend the next six miles reminding you that you screwed up or listing every other turn you’ve missed since you started driving.

Imagine if it did. Remember Portland? No. Absolutely not.

Recalculating doesn’t erase the route you’ve already traveled. It simply acknowledges where you are now and figures out what comes next. I’d like to get a little better at doing that with people.

Recalculating doesn’t erase where you’ve been. It makes room for where you are now.

That doesn’t mean ignoring history or pretending patterns don’t matter. It doesn’t mean immediately rewriting everything I believe because someone behaved differently once. It just means noticing when there is something new to consider and allowing that to become part of the file too.

Maybe that’s really what I’m getting at with all of this. We don’t have to constantly reassess every person we’ve ever known or question every instinct we have about them. But every once in a while, it might be worth checking whether the person standing in front of us still matches the version we’ve been carrying around.

Because I know I want people to do that with me.

The File on Me

I’ve changed a lot throughout my life, and I’m not done. There are things I’ve learned, ways I show up differently, mistakes I wouldn’t make again, and versions of myself I’ve simply outgrown. I hope some of that eventually makes its way into the files people carry on me.

But I don’t get to decide when someone else changes their opinion of me. I can’t reach into their experiences and make edits because I’d prefer a newer version. All I can do is keep showing up as the person I am now and let them decide what to do with what they see.

That makes the reverse a little harder to ignore. If I want room to change, I have to at least consider whether I’m leaving that room for anyone else.

Everything in my file on someone might be true. It still isn’t everything there is to know about them.

I think that’s the part I want to carry with me. Not that every old opinion is wrong. Not that every relationship deserves another chance. Not that history should be forgotten. Sometimes the file exists for very good reasons, and sometimes what we’ve learned about someone is exactly the information we need.

But old information and complete information aren’t necessarily the same thing.

So every once in a while, maybe we check the date. We notice what’s happening now. We let new patterns earn their place beside the old ones instead of deciding the story was finished years ago.

The file isn’t the person. There’s always more to know.

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