My neighbor is dead!

Or so I thought…

I live in an apartment building in Manhattan with views of another apartment building across the street from me. At night each apartment across from me lights up like a square in a virtual meeting room. From my living room sofa I can watch one couple unpacking a copious amount of boxes, while another apartment shows a never used stationary bike tucked into the corner of a bedroom.

I have told myself a story about all of the inhabitants of this building. Without noticing my thoughts at the time, I now realize I have built up a whole narrative about each of the occupants. I receive snippets of information from them each evening as they go about their night time rituals of cooking dinner, watching television and eventually retiring for the evening. I have become so invested in the evening show, I even became concerned about a specific resident when I noticed I hadn’t seen her for several weeks.

As I realized her apartment had been dark in the evening for a several days, I automatically reviewed in my head what it was that I “knew” about this woman across the street. I knew she lived alone and that she appeared to leave for work each day as I often would see her come home in the evening. I believed she was involved in the arts somehow judging by the theater mask statue in the window and some beautiful artwork spotlighted in her hallway. Where was she? How long had she been gone? Did anyone know to check on her? Night after night as the apartment stayed dark and the other boxes lit up around her, I began to worry she might be dead. My husband laughed at me when I told him my theory. We chuckled at my ridiculous suggestion and went back to our dinner.

Then last night the most beautiful thing happened! She was home! She appeared in her kitchen preparing dinner as if nothing had gone on. She appeared unconcerned and no worse for wear as she made her way from the stove to the refrigerator organizing her evening meal.?

I laughed at myself for my concern. But it did make me think about how we construct stories in our head, most of the time without our noticing. I had decided that the woman across the street was a lonely person who quite possibly had died all alone without anyone to care for her. These “facts” about her had been constructed solely from my unscientific observation skills from the comfort of my sofa!?

It got me thinking about the assumptions we all make about what the other is thinking or why they do what they do, their motivation for their actions, and even what their behavior really means about our relationship.?

Recently I witnessed someone say to another, “I feel empathy, I just might not express it the way you do”.

This sentence stopped me in my tracks. Of course, my interpretation of you, my view of the reasons you do what you do, are seen through my worldview. My judgments, experiences, and biases all inform how I see the world and your place in it.

We all make assumptions, judgments, and even decide who the other is based on our observations.?

Have you ever noticed that most arguments stem from a potential disagreement about how I perceive what you said or have done, how I feel it impacts me, and therefore who I believe you to be? Misunderstandings, assumptions, and judgments all color in whatever we want the story to be.?

I mean I had decided my neighbor was dead after all!?

In therapy we make conscious, through conversation, the running narrative that we all have behind the scenes or out of our awareness. As we make these beliefs conscious we can “turn the light onto” the awareness that what we have told ourselves about ourselves and others is always impacted by our own belief system. Is my story true? Maybe, but just maybe not.