[This week we offer a second exercise from Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist and Crafting the Personal Essay and editor of Brevity magazine. –ed.]

Too often, we write about other people because we think we know something about that person, or because we feel that we can weigh in with intelligent correctness on their actions or the choices they have made. Too often as well, we end up sounding like mister- or ms.-know-it-all. Whether we are writing about a celebrity or politician, someone who lives just down the street, or a relative — perhaps a seldom-visited grandfather — the assumption that we actually know someone’s motives and understand what factors into their behavior is a dicey one at best. Life is complicated, and people are hard to fathom. 

So think a moment about the people you do not comprehend, and would never claim to fully understand, even if you thought long and hard about it. My list would include two friends who struggled to keep together a marriage but simply could not. Neither one of them was bad or at fault. They just couldn’t find the working formula, and I have no better take on what they should have done instead. Still, it seems a shame.

I also can’t understand a friend who repeatedly shoots herself in the foot just when her career is taking off. Clearly, she wants to succeed, just as we all do, but something deep inside is driving her to fail. Though I have observed this behavior for years, it still makes no sense to me at all.

A less serious but equally baffling example are the folks in my neighborhood (and in most neighborhoods, I imagine) who treat their front lawns and driveways as if they were hospital operating rooms, hosing away every leaf and acorn first thing in the morning, painstakingly digging out each dandelion and virtually every green shoot that does not look like perfect Kentucky grass. Now I like my yard to look nice, but I can’t see putting eight hours a week into it, and a few leaves and twigs and weeds are, to my mind, inevitable. It’s autumn as I’m writing this, and not only is my lawn covered in red oak leaves, but I just noticed a stray leaf in the living room, by the front door. Mother Nature is nothing if not persistent.

Your Turn
Make your own list of the people who make no sense to you. You aren’t firmly against their choices, and you don’t have all the answers — they just baffle you. Put some real people on that list, some types of people (the lawn purists), and even famous folks if you’d like.

Now write about what you don’t understand, and how unsure you are about what is going on inside the mind and heart of this person. Don’t attack or suggest that you know better; just explore.

[This exercise doesn’t take long to explain, but you can write for pages here about the person you choose and then start again writing about another person of your choice. It won’t be long before you have a lot written. Not judging or attacking means you have to evoke that person and their thoughts and actions as well as wonder the questions you have and make the associations you can to behaviors of your own. You should come up with personal essays and vignettes that open the heart and further our inquiry into human nature. — ed.]