Episode 61: You Are Somebody’s Person

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The People You Love Haven’t Met All of You Yet

There are people in your life you know so well you can tell what kind of mood they’re in by the way they say hello. You know the stories they always tell, the foods they refuse to eat for reasons that stopped making sense twenty years ago, the exact look they get when they’re annoyed but trying very hard to pretend they aren’t. You know what will make them laugh before you even say it, and sometimes you know something is wrong before they do.

And somehow, even with all that knowledge, they can still surprise you. I love that about people.

We tend to think of knowing someone as something we eventually finish. You meet them, spend enough time together, collect years of stories and experiences, and eventually you know who they are. Except that’s not really how it works, because none of us stays exactly who we were when somebody first met us.

We’re still changing. Still discovering things. Still changing our minds about things we once swore we never would. Sometimes we even become interested in something we spent years making fun of, which is always a particularly humbling development.

People are moving targets. Thank Goodness.

You Get to Fall in Love More Than Once

I say this about my husband and me all the time. We’re really lucky because over the years, we’ve gotten to fall in love with each other more than once.

We’re not the same people we were when we first fell in love. How could we be? Life has happened since then. We’ve grown, changed our minds, wanted different things at different times and discovered parts of ourselves we couldn’t possibly have known were coming. We’ve had to adjust to new versions of each other while becoming new versions of ourselves at the exact same time.

When you really think about it, it’s kind of wild that any of us pulls that off.

But there’s something incredibly beautiful about knowing someone deeply while still leaving room to be surprised by them. Long relationships aren’t just about accumulating information about another person until you’ve finally cracked the code. They’re about continuing to pay attention.

Loving someone isn’t memorizing who they are and expecting them to stay there forever.

Sometimes you get to look at a person you’ve known for years and realize there’s still more to know. Something matters to them now that didn’t matter five years ago. They’ve become more confident somewhere or softer somewhere else. They’ve found a new interest, changed an opinion, taken a risk or started dreaming about something you never saw coming.

And now you get to know that person too. That’s a pretty incredible privilege!

Think About How Many Versions You’ve Already Known

This doesn’t just belong to marriage. Think about your people for a minute. Really think about who they were when you first met them compared with who they are today.

If you’ve known someone long enough, you’ve probably watched them become more than once. You’ve seen careers change, relationships begin and end, kids grow up, interests appear out of nowhere and priorities rearrange themselves. You’ve watched someone who once said, “I would never…” eventually do exactly that thing because life has a fantastic sense of humor.

The people you love have surprised you. And I would bet their changing didn’t make you love them less. It gave you more of them to know.

That’s the part I keep coming back to, because we don’t always give ourselves that same freedom. We can be incredibly generous about someone else’s growth while treating our own like it needs to go before a committee for approval.

We wonder if something makes sense.We wonder if something makes sense, if we have time for it, or if we’re too old to start. Then there’s the question of whether anybody will understand why this suddenly matters to us. Sometimes we can turn one tiny spark of excitement into a full legal defense before we’ve even let ourselves enjoy it.

Meanwhile, the people who love us may be watching the whole thing thinking, “Look at you.”

They Haven’t Met All of You Yet

There is a version of you five years from now that doesn’t exist yet. I don’t mean a perfected version who finally drinks enough water, answers every email, has matching Tupperware lids and somehow remembers to move the laundry before it smells weird. I mean you.

Five more years of stories. Ideas. Mistakes. Adventures. Changed opinions. Things you tried because they sounded fun. Things you were certain you’d love and absolutely hated. People you haven’t met yet. Places you haven’t been. News you haven’t received.

There are things that will matter enormously to you someday that you don’t even know exist today.

And the people who love you get to meet that person.

The people you love haven’t met all of you yet.

I don’t think we stop often enough to consider how exciting that is.

Some future version of you is going to call somebody you love with news you don’t have today. You’re going to tell stories that haven’t happened yet. Something will make you laugh so hard you can’t get the words out, and somebody who knows you well will start laughing simply because you’re laughing.

That’s life still waiting to happen between you.

Why Would Your Happiness Be Different?

Think about what happens when somebody you love gets genuinely excited about something.

Their face changes. Their voice changes. They start talking faster and suddenly you’re getting a twenty-minute explanation about something you had absolutely no intention of learning about that day.

And you listen. You ask questions, catch maybe 14 percent of what they’re saying, and nod along hoping there won’t be a quiz. But you’re smiling.

Why?

It’s not the thing. It’s them. You love seeing them like that. Their happiness gets to you because you love the person experiencing it. You don’t need to share the interest to enjoy watching someone you care about become completely wrapped up in it.

And once you realize that, it’s hard not to turn the thought around.

Why would the people who love you feel any differently?

They weren’t smiling at the thing. They were smiling at you.

We can make choosing ourselves sound enormous and complicated when sometimes it really isn’t. Sometimes it’s simply allowing ourselves to care about something, pursue something, change something or enjoy something without immediately worrying that doing so somehow takes away from everybody else.

The people who love you want good things for you too. Seeing you happy is part of the joy of loving you.

You Are Somebody’s Person Too

This might be the part that gets me most. We know who our people are. We know who we’d call first with good news and who we’d want beside us when the news isn’t good. Their happiness can change the mood of our entire day simply because something wonderful happened to them.

But it’s strangely easy to forget that we’re standing in that place for somebody else. Your name is on somebody else’s list. Somebody knows your real laugh. They know the story you’ve told so many times they could probably take over if you lost your place. They’ve watched your face change when something excites you. At some point, you’ve walked into a room and somebody felt better simply because you were there.

There are memories of you living in other people’s heads that you probably don’t even remember making. That one gets me!

A completely ordinary moment in your life might be part of a story someone else still tells. Something you said and forgot about could have mattered more than you knew. A random day that barely registered for you might be one somebody else would love to visit again.

You are already part of somebody else’s favorite memories.

And you’re not done making them. There are ordinary days ahead that somebody is going to remember. An inside joke you haven’t made yet will eventually need no explanation. Something completely unplanned will become a story everybody has heard a hundred times. Someone you love is going to call with news they can barely get out fast enough.

Someday, you’ll make that call too.

They Don’t Want Less of You

This is where the whole idea has shifted for me. When we talk about choosing ourselves, it can sound like we’re making a withdrawal from everyone else. As if there is a fixed amount of us available and anything we give to our own interests, happiness, growth or curiosity must be taken directly from somebody we love.

But think about what you actually want for your people. Do you want them smaller? Less curious? Less interested in their own lives? Would you prefer they stop changing so you never have to learn anything new about them?

Of course not. You want more of them!

You want to know what they discover, get the phone call when something incredible happens and see their face when the thing they’ve been working toward finally works. There are ridiculous stories still to hear, wins to celebrate and plenty of opportunities to tease them mercilessly about whatever new obsession has taken over their life.

And you want to meet whoever they become next.

And if that’s what you want for the people you love, why would you believe they want anything different for you?

Choosing yourself doesn’t mean choosing them less. It gives them more of you to love.

Maybe that’s the piece we’ve been missing. Choosing yourself doesn’t always pull you away from the people you love. Sometimes it brings more of your actual self into the relationship. It gives them another interest to hear about, another story to know, another dream to root for and another side of you they might never have met if you’d decided it was easier to stay exactly where you were.

We’re Still Becoming

I hope I’m 80 years old and still learning new things about the people I love. Somebody I’ve known for half a century could still completely surprise me with a new interest, a changed opinion or a story that begins with, “Okay, you’re not going to believe this.”

And I hope they’re still learning things about me too. Because maybe that’s one of the greatest privileges we get in this life. We get to love people while they’re becoming. And we get to be loved while we’re becoming too.

There are people beside you right now who have known multiple versions of you already, and if you’re lucky, they’ll know a whole lot more.

So let yourself keep changing. Let something new matter to you. Follow the idea that gets stuck in your head. Get excited enough that you talk too fast and somebody has to wait ten minutes to get a word in.

Then look at the person smiling while you’re telling them about it. They may not care about the thing at all. They care about you. And somewhere down the road, the two of you might look back at this version of yourselves and barely recognize the people you used to be.

That’s okay. You were never supposed to finish becoming. Neither were they. You just get to keep meeting each other along the way.

How incredible is that?

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