I am an observer. I watch people. As an engaging conversationalist I hide it well, this tendency to take in everyone around me. I am looking though, as I interact with you. Ever curious. Wondering. Hoping to discern something from people I see. To look past their outward appearance to see what lies within. Considering who they appear to be, wondering who they really are.

We think we know. We look and make a split second judgment. They are successful, they are attractive, they are busy, they are good parents, attentive partners, satisfied with their lives, lonely, sad, socially awkward, lost and searching. All in a split second.

Those in our daily lives, those with whom we live; we think we know them, and understand them. What motivates them, their passions, their goals, their moral code. We love them so we assume to understand them. To know what drives them, what they are capable of, or rather we assume to know what they are not capable of.

You who know me personally have the unique perspective to see through my eyes. I have learned to never underestimate people. Those close to us are indeed capable of things we cannot even imagine of them.

Don’t be fooled to think you are immune. Each of us is capable of doing things we never imagined. We roll the dice, take the risk of losing everything, for a fleeting chance to grasp at something. We see ourselves as evolved, but internally we are at our core the primal beings of our beginnings, driven by survival programming so embedded in our brains we cannot ourselves understand why we do what we do. We have the capacity to lead two separate lives. Each of us. One evolved; presentable and respectable that the world sees, and one so primal, so base, so driven by our subconscious mind we cannot even explain it to ourselves.

As it is the Lenten season, many devotionals are centered on Satan and temptation. I don’t see it so clearly as good and evil. I cannot make any judgment. Of him, of you, of me. This is a place where I have finally arrived. While we may not know what we are capable of, we cannot assume we are incapable of anything.

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.” Josephine Hart