At the risk of annoying my theoretical readers, I’m going to 1) jump right into the start of the second volume of essays, quickening my pace and 2) adopt a completely new numbering structure, because Montaigne scholars never think of the essays as one continuous group, but rather of three groups, all starting over at one.

And here I am at one of Montaigne’s most important pieces, one that draws this startling, but influential conclusion:

We are all bits and pieces, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.

Because of this, human beings can be very confusing. Trying to figure them out can take up a great deal of head space. More than one therapist through the years have told me not to do this, but I kept believing, for erroneous reasons, that I had some special ability to get inside the heads of others.

My profession led me to this false thought. For many years, I misunderstood my own work and believed my clients who told me that I had some special ability to pull out thoughts they had before they expressed them.

In truth, being a speechwriter isn’t about entering another consciousness and parroting it. It’s about creating a character that is partly the speaker, partly me (because we can never escape subjectivity) and partly the role being played, because anyone who hires a speechwriter is doing so to fulfill a leadership position.

What I do isn’t an act of understanding, but reduction. I boil down the most essential parts of a person, mix them with me, and give them the organizational costume to wear. That’s all there is to it, no magic.

But it took me years to also understand how destructive the act of trying to figure people out can be. When we try to assemble those bits and pieces of others into a coherent shape, we are mostly just ruminating on the inconsistencies that are creating anxiety for us. This leads us to form theories and collect the bits and pieces in a way that support the theory.

The only way to get to know someone, as best possible, is to have open, honest conversations. I have sometimes been surprised how even short, informal chats can reframe my opinions of a person, helping me see how I mis-constructed the Lego structure of their personality.

Just recently, one of my children was having a mental health centered conversation and he was talking about someone in his friend circle, asking me how to word a text message in response. I found myself finally saying the words that therapists had told me and I tried so long to dismiss.

My son responded that he liked trying to figure people out and thought he was good at it. It may take him many years of trial and error to figure out his error. But that’s ok, it’s all part of constructing his own bits and pieces.