I used to be really jealous of other people having fun without me. It didn't even matter if I myself was already having a good time without them. When I would hear later about what others were doing I'd get the equivalent of order envy. Sure my good time was good, but in comparison it didn't seem as good. This was worst in high school. I would hear about people off drinking or having sex and I'd think about how I spent my evening playing video games or hanging with my friends, talking about whatever we liked, just wasn't as cool. Sometimes it felt downright childish. I wish I could say that I'm completely over that type of thinking, but every so often it comes back and I question how I spent my time compared to others, who seem to be off doing adult things. Part of that comes from the fact that for most of my life I've been on my own in some form or another. Living on my own. No significant relationships to speak of. Not only capable of being alone, but preferring it to company. The problem with that was that while I wanted to be alone, I didn't exactly want to be isolated from the world. I wanted to experience things. I wanted to experience the things I assumed other people were doing all the time, without me. Life seemed like this exclusive party and I wasn't invited.
There will always be curiosity about what goes on behind closed doors. No matter how well we think we know someone, there is always a part of them that's hidden. The friend from work goes home and does who-knows-what when no one is looking. It's very likely they go home and watch TV like most bored people. Still there is that shadow of a doubt that maybe, just maybe they're doing something exciting and telling no one about it. At least not until much later. Have you ever been talking to friends, revealing little pieces of information about yourself and someone exclaims that they didn't know that about you? Or on the flip side someone drops a bomb on you that you had no idea was possible. Someone was arrested. Someone was in a threesome. Someone once did hardcore drugs on more than one occasion. Someone nearly died doing something incredible or stupid or both. The person telling the story may not think anything of it because for them it's just another aspect of their life's journey. It happened and that doesn't necessarily mean that the same behavior is still going on. Still it makes one wonder when they did whatever did the people in their life have any idea that it was happening.
With most people in our lives we're coming in most of the way through the movie. There are exceptions to this of course, but unless you're still friends with the people you grew up with and never were apart for significant periods of your life, there are going to be serious gaps in knowledge about the people we choose as friends. Most of my friends are relatively late additions to my life, arriving at the last third of the story. Others who have been around for longer have been far enough away that they too may as well have shown up after things have already gotten started. That doesn't make either of them any less my friends, but it shows that even the people closest to us have plenty of things in their lives we don't know anything about. With most of the people I know, I couldn't tell you what they do with their spare time. There are some who I'm sure lead fairly mundane lives and are perfectly happy with the occasional burst of excitement. In fact I'm pretty sure that if we were able to examine each others lives we'd find that they are about as eventful as our own. As I said though, there is still that bit of doubt, that possibly someone out there is experiencing more than us and in doing so that means we may be missing out.
People always talk about their privacy as though it's a right. Then those same people who feel it's no one's business what they do behind closed doors are the first to rail about their right to know what someone else is doing. Be it a celebrity, or politician, or even neighbor. There is this sense of entitlement that seems to be spreading with the information age. The person who gets scared at the thought of someone seeing their internet search history is also the person who feels they should be informed who that politician slept with. We want to know what everyone else is up to, but would rather no one know what we're doing, even if it's nothing special. Sometimes our fears of what other people may think are justified because no one likes to be judged. Still if you figure that just about everyone in the world has something they do which could be embarrassing if viewed by a third party, then what does it matter what someone else thinks? There was a Stephen King story about a town on an island that ran into a force of evil. This evil had a single ultimatum: give him what he wants and he'll go away. Until he got what he wanted he was going to reveal everyone's dark secrets in front of the whole town. Of course everyone gasped when they heard someone's secret and felt somewhat morally superior. At least until their own secret was revealed. It was an interesting examination of what we try to hide away behind a locked door. Those doors give us just enough protection to feel that can be ourselves, without fear of judgement. The problem is those same doors can perpetuate the illusion that what's happening behind them is more interesting than it really is. So which is better, seeing what's on the other side regardless of what's there or forever wondering exactly what's happening just out of sight?
