I'm not a person who generally goes out of my way to be neighborly. I try not to be unfriendly, but I am not the lady knocking on people's doors with plates of welcome brownies. In fact, just a couple of months ago I met one of my neighbors across the street for the first time in 14 years.
It's not that I'm rude. I've waved to him from across the way when we both happen to see each other in our respective driveways. But I am a private person. I don't want to be surrounded by people I feel obligated to talk to each time I leave my house.
But, despite my instinctive nature to keep to myself, I can't stop my imagination from creating lives for some of the people I see daily. It's like pareidolia, the syndrome where people see human faces in everyday objects. I create full lives out of the glimpses of some people I see on a regular basis.
It's not something that I do for every person I see. In fact, it's rare that it happens. I'm pretty good at just letting people walk by unnoticed.
The first time I realized it was happening was when my husband I lived in London. We lived near Notting Hill tube station. So every day I would get off the tube and turn left, walk by the fishmonger, and across the street there was a woman who would always be sitting in the Seattle Coffee Company window. She had a small laptop tethered to her cell phone, and she would be sitting typing.
First, she was a very pretty woman. She was petite, with brown hair. She was always dressed in what appeared to be business attire. And she was always sitting in the same spot. Second, having a laptop tethered to a cell phone was pretty technologically advanced. It was 1998. She was very high tech.
I was usually schlepping by in whatever errand running attire I had thrown on that day, with no cell phone (because we didn't have accounts in London) and no real regular routine.
So I noticed her. And every day I got more intrigued by her. What was she doing? Why was she there? What did she do professionally? Was she a writer? Was she a reporter? She looked wealthy, was she wealthy? Why was she in a coffee shop every day in the afternoon?
And in my mind I made up various stories about what she did, and what her life was like. I created an existence for her because I couldn't stop my brain from filling in the gaps of her life. I would create a boyfriend for her. Sometimes she would have a husband. I imagined she lived in a fancy flat, and worked at some executive type job. I imagined she would leave the coffee shop and meet friends at a trendy bar.
Seeing her everyday made her feel like a part of my life.
Twenty years later, the image of that woman in the window of that coffee shop is still one of my primary memories of my time in London.
Fast forward to now. And instead of a woman in the coffee shop, it's a woman who jogs around our neighborhood. We often jog at the same time, so we do the friendly neighbor thing and sort of wave at each other.
But this woman doesn't just jog. She runs. She runs at high speed—for hours. And she runs in circles through the neighborhood. When I was marathon training, I would run in big loops through the city, or go to the jog park and run laps around the mile track.
But my neighbor runs in loops through the neighborhood. So on my two mile jog, I sometimes see her three or four times running past me. And then I see her another couple of times because I walk my dog around the block when I get back from my jog. And then I'll see her again after I've showered and am in my car on the way to the grocery store.
So of course my first thought is, why? Why does she run so fast? Why does she run for so long?
She also rides her bike. Similar to her running, she rides at high speed. She always has on a backpack and, again, she loops through the neighborhoods.
In my mind, I've decided she's in the armed forces. I imagine that she exercises because it's part of her job. She needs to stay fit because she's in the military and it's what she does. When she's running, she really does seem very robotic about it, almost a terminator. There's nothing relaxing about it. She doesn't listen to music. She doesn't wear a hat or sunglasses. She's just out there running.
And I'm not sure why I think she's in the military. I've asked my husband (who also sees her regularly) if he thinks she's in the military and he said "no." So it's something I've made up. It's how my mind has filled in the gaps of why she does what she does.
And I know that I'm not alone in doing it. Books are written about it. Fortunately, unlike the protagonist in the popular book Girl on the Train, I have managed to not get dangerously obsessed with the people I get fixated on.
But I find it fascinating that there are certain people that, through the decades of my life, my brain has fixated on. I see dozens of people every day. And most pass by without making any real lasting impression. Even people I see regularly. I see them and think "neighbor" or "mom" or "guy." But there are those few who my brain latches onto. And once that happens, my mind seems to need to create a whole life out of the glimpse I get.
So I asked my mom if this has ever happened to her:
Have you ever created a story for someone and then met him or her and realized that your imagined story was completely different than the reality?
I've never made up whole stories of people's lives which, by the way, sounds like fun; maybe I should try it.
But...I have created stories of why people have behaved a certain way (often towards me!). The amazing thing is that I'm almost always wrong. When I attribute motives to why people have acted a certain way and then find out the real reason, I'm usually way off base. I'm finally learning that people can behave the way they do for a lot of reasons and that it's a waste of my precious time and also often a source of stress for me to make up reasons or worry about it.
For example, just the other day, a friend didn't get back to me about something she said she would. I thought she'd forgotten or didn't care enough only to find out that there was a completely valid reason for the delay in her getting back to me. Because, from experience, I knew that my assessment was likely to be wrong, every time a negative reaction about her would arise, I'd tell myself to "knock it off" and just be patient. I find that helpful. I've spent far too much time in life trying to figure out people's motives, only to be wrong most of the time.
The only thing I'd add to your piece is that I've noticed that no matter how boring a life seems from the outside, if you actually hear a person's live story, it's always interesting and full of twists and turns you'd never imagined. So your jogging neighbor may not be in the military, but I'll bet she's led a fascinating life!
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