In John Green’s novel Paper Towns, there is a section in “Part 2” where Q contemplates how we as people tend to view others as mirrors, and how we need to take the time to view them more as windows. We discussed this quite a bit in my Adolescent and Young Adult Literature class, and it’s a concept that had really managed to wedge its way into my head ever since.

If you think about the people you know, you probably automatically start to attribute many qualities to them. “That guy is a jerk,” or, “She’s so nice, she always hosts that charity event.” Don’t get me wrong, these ideas we have about people aren’t always incorrect, but this is what I’m going to call viewing a person as a mirror. If every time we see or think about somebody we automatically just attribute the same one or two ideas or concepts about them, then we aren’t viewing them as a whole person. We are reflecting our ideas and views of said person into almost in absolute in our minds.

So how about windows? It’s easy enough to say that the idea would be just to look through somebody, but that can also come off as a bit of a negative. “You’ve got to look through him; see through his b.s.!” It’s not looking through a person in that sense, but more looking through to who a person really is. There are the pieces of a person we see and know at school or at work, and then from there we can fill in the blanks. That grumpy cashier lady at Kmart has a home life, and at home, she might have a family. When she was younger she probably had a dream of where she wanted to be later in life. She might not be wholly unhappy now as her attitude might have put off, maybe her dog just died and it’s been a rough week. But at the end of the night, she’ll still go home, eat some Mac and Cheese, and watch Wheel of Fortune. But then maybe not, this is just one set of an endless amount of possibilities of who this cashier might be outside of work.

This isn’t meant to sound preachy or to make people feel bad, but more-so just to point out a common probably that everybody in society deals with. It could be that you thought the waitress at that restaurant was awful and that is how you’ll remember her forever. But on the flipside, Bob from financing may give you vibes that he really doesn’t care for you as a person, and you just don’t know why. Could be that he saw one facet of your person he didn’t like and in his mind that is how he views you now.

Nobody is perfect, that’s a given. We won’t always all get along and like each other, and nobody expects that. But if we make the conscious effort not to look at people as if they’re mirrors, and looks at them more like windows, maybe we can all understand each other a bit better.