On the Difficulty of Knowing Anything at All

Hello readers, welcome back to another edition of Think About It.

I’m sure we all have wondered: How well can we ever really know another person?

We all have many people that we ‘know’. I’m not just talking about family and relatives, but also friends, neighbours, colleagues, classmates, etc. We share homes with them, we grow up with them, we do things together, we laugh and cry with them, and still, sometimes, they can do or say something that leaves us stunned, or that doesn’t make sense. When that happens, we say to ourselves: “That is not him/her, he/she isn’t like that.”

The same goes for feelings. How often do we say, “I don’t know what I’m feeling”? Emotions have a way of slipping through our grasp. Sometimes they defy easy labels. 

And then there’s the world itself and our place in it. It feels familiar and solid most of the time, but suddenly everything feels strange, hollow, and empty.

Such realisations, according to Albert Camus, can happen at any random and ordinary moment. In his book, The Myth of Sisyphus, he calls this the absurd.

In one of the passages, Camus writes:

No matter how close we are to someone, there is always something that will remain unknown to us. What Camus has said is more about a structural limit rather than a failure of empathy or communication.

Yet Camus remains careful; he doesn’t slip into despair. He tells us to focus on that which helps us know people. In the same passage, to paraphrase, he says that, practically, we can still know people by their behaviour, their actions, and the consequences they leave behind.

In other words, we may not know what goes on in another person’s mind, but we can learn a lot from their body language, gestures, and the effects of their presence.

To illustrate, Camus uses the example of an actor. He says that watching an actor a hundred times doesn’t mean he knows him personally. Yet if he gathers all the characters the actor has played, he might say he knows him a little more. From this paradox, he draws a striking conclusion:

This cuts against our instinct to treat performance as superficial and authenticity as real. For Camus, both are integral. The roles we choose to play, the masks we wear, the ways we present ourselves to the world, these are not false layers hiding the “true self.” They reveal as much about who we are as our private thoughts.

Later, Camus extends the same idea to emotions.

Emotions like love, jealousy, or grief cannot be reduced to labels or definitions because they are complex. But they do reveal themselves through consequences: the way they shape choices, influence behaviour, and ripple into other lives. Instead of asking, “What is jealousy?” Camus asks us to observe what jealousy does.

This is not so far from modern psychology, which often describes emotions by their patterns of expression and their impact on thought and action. Camus’ point is that even when feelings remain elusive, they leave traces. So if we can outline those traces, we can gain a partial understanding at least.

This is Camus’ method. However, he acknowledges its limitations and he is being honest about the contradictions in his own thinking. He calls his method "a method of analysis and not of knowledge."

He’s made a distinction between the two because, as he puts it:

This means what we call a “method” already carries hidden assumptions. Begin with analysis, and you’ve already decided in advance that you’ll only reach appearances, not essences.

What if these assumptions are wrong? That’s why Camus suggests that "all true knowledge is impossible." By that, he means that we're not going to achieve some final, complete understanding of ourselves, others, our feelings, or our purpose. The best we can do is sketch appearances and describe the atmosphere they create.

Why does this all matter

So, after reading Camus’ words, we may feel like he’s not offering a solution to absurdity or a clear roadmap for living. Instead, he offers something more unsettling and potentially more valuable perhaps: a way of being rigorous about uncertainty while still paying careful attention to what we can actually observe.

We cannot fully know people, feelings, or the world itself. But we can attend to appearances, to gestures, to consequences. We can sketch climates of thought and experience, even if we cannot hold their essence.

For us, this has several implications in today’s age:

• In relationships: don’t expect to know someone completely. Learn to read the gestures and consequences, and accept the mystery that remains.

• In emotions: don’t obsess over perfect definitions of what you feel. Instead, notice what your feelings do.

• In identity: don’t treat your roles and performances as inauthentic. They are as real as your authenticity.

Now, here’s something for you to think about:

• If we can never fully know someone, does that make intimacy less real, or does it make the effort to connect even more meaningful?

• If we are partly defined by our performances, which is “truer”: the self in private moments, or the self that acts before others?

That's all for this week. Remember, this is a conversation; your thoughts are always welcome. You can leave a comment or just hit reply.

Until next time…

Stay Curious

Zaid