“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is suppose that they are like himself”

What does John Steinbeck mean when he says this? I think that he means that, at our core, we really don’t know how other people think, and how they perceive the world. Of course we can gain a deep understanding of others through interacting with them, and through living life. But no one will ever be inside the mind and life of another.

Steinbeck has noted that we can only see a small portion of the wholeness of a person, and even those things we may be reading inaccurately. We all have a deep well of complicated emotions, feelings and beliefs that we ourselves take a lifetime to understand.

Obviously we do not show even a fraction of that, and often what we do show is not an accurate representation of ourselves. How we perceive others is often so far from their actual reality that it’s difficult to ever truly understand anyone.

When you think about how wildly differently people view things, act, and live their lives, you can feel quite a seperation from others. And most people have, at some point in their lives, felt like they are different from others, that they don’t fit in.

By our very nature, most people think that how they view the world and how they act makes sense. Of course we can account for differing viewpoints, but we need to believe that other people at some level have a similarity to ourselves, otherwise we can never understand them in a real way.

That is what I believe Steinbeck’s quote means. We have to take a leap of faith that, despite how different we are from others, and how little we really know about others, at some level, they are like us.

This world is complex and difficult, and we need to find ways that we can identify with each other. That is why we hope that others are like us.