The moment you think you’ve figured someone out is the moment you stop hearing them.

A conclusion about a person quietly turns into a filter. Once you have decided what somebody is, you stop listening for anything new and start collecting confirmations of the file you already built. Meanwhile they keep changing and your version of them does not.

Ask somebody a question you genuinely cannot predict the answer to this week. What the best part of their summer was, what they are actually worried about. Then take the answer as it comes instead of checking it against the file.