MAY 12, 2026
Can people ever truly know us?
Twin Peaks: Fire, Walk with Me (1992)
Human beings are like onions: you peel their skin just to get tiny bits of their personality.
And when all the layers are gone, you end up with nothing but tears.
The truth is, you’re never truly going to know somebody.
With all the secrets, lies, and even the gestures they mimic when they are around you, it’s all part of an act.
Just like in a play, we read scripts from our minds and present this new personality to the world — something artificial. That’s why human beings are such great actors: we all know how to pretend to be someone else.
But can someone truly know your deepest secrets? Can you really share your soul?
There’s a force in nature that knows you very well, like an energy that exists everywhere and inside everyone. I believe we share this energy together, and in some ways, we can always tell when someone is not being themselves.
While we are still actors in this play, we are also part of the audience, reacting to the story being told.
Image via Pinterest/ creator unknown
But having a persona is not the issue. As I said before, we all know how to act. There’s no crime in that.
The real problem lies beneath the signals some people send us — the struggles we simply choose to ignore. Laura Palmer, from the TV series Twin Peaks, is a clear example of someone leading two lives at the same time.
Laura is the personification of suffering. She represents all those women who suffer in silence, those who are considered the “life of the party” while secretly going through something unbearable.
People knew she was troubled. Everybody knew she wasn’t what she pretended to be, but they chose to ignore it.
We choose to ignore all the signs people send us, even when we know something is wrong. We can sense when someone is struggling, even if we don’t fully understand why.
The difficult part is trying to understand the source of the pain, allowing the other person to speak, or helping those who need it. In the end, we tend to ignore it all.
The play must go on, and the audience expects a happy ending.
Twin Peaks: Fire, Walk with Me (1992)
Terrible tragedies are what finally make people realise something is wrong.
Unfortunately, we only seem to react to suffering once it becomes impossible to ignore. That’s the only moment when we finally leave our characters behind and begin living in the real world.
War, revenge, violence — all these things force us to wake up from this endless dream, but only when the problem begins to affect us personally.
Happy endings don’t exist, and we will never truly know the people around us if we are not there when they need us the most.
We are never fully seen for who we are, and the reason for that is selfishness.
People care too much about their own success, their own lives. That’s why there are so many children abandoned by their parents and so many women suffering domestic violence in silence.
Nothing truly moves people anymore. That is why so many victims choose to hide their pain — because no one really wants to know your true self. They are more comfortable with the version of you that never cries.
“Open your eyes, James. You don’t even know me. There are things about me — even Donna doesn’t know me. Your Laura disappeared. It’s just me now.”
Twin Peaks: Fire, Walk with Me (1992)
The hardest thing to accept in life is that you are on your own. There is no one coming to save you. No miracle.
You are your own miracle.
You may try to seek help in others, but your own attitude is what truly matters. You have to protect yourself and learn how to survive unimaginable pain.
And when you finally recognise your angels within yourself, you begin to understand how life truly works — and how no one will ever fully see through you or completely understand who you are.
That’s when you realise you no longer need anyone else to define you.
Stylus.co 