History

The past.  Maybe it's just me, but in looking at a person, an individual, considering their personality and their merits, one of the things that interest me the most is their history, their past, where they have been.  In part, this is because I don't collect people as they are, I collect lives and I collect stories (if that sounds unfamiliar, this should clear it up a bit).  And lives, in my mind, are a collection of everything a person has been and done, not just who they have become. 

I don't let myself judge simply based on the past, the events that took place, the things that shaped an individual's life.  Hell, I try to not judge at all.  People will be people, they all have their own thoughts, concerns, experiences, foundations for decisions, and circumstances I really don't know.  Even if I do know them, I still don't want to base anything on them because there's probably something else to be taken account that I don't know, or something I just can't understand.

But that's enough justification for my fascination with humans.  The point of this post isn't an explanation of how I do or don't analyze people and how that does (or, as far as possible within my limits, doesn't) affect how I treat them.  Actually, I don't honestly know what the point of this post was at any point.  I guess what it really comes back to is my intense curiosity, this insane obsession with people and their lives, and just how much the past changes them.

I'm not so picky as to pinpoint the cause and effect of everything and anything, but I do in fact very much enjoy tracing things back to how they began.  Among those things, of course, are the lives of people.  I don't mean the beginning as in their birth, but I do mean childhood, or really any events that were particularly significant to them, no matter how recent or how long gone.  So in that way, part of what I want to know most isn't simply what is now but also what was, what came of it, and even what could have been.

Sure, the hypotheticals aren't really part of the story, but that doesn't make me want to know them any less.