Recently I said:

“Sometimes you meet someone who seems really shallow, and you think, ‘There’s GOT to be more to this person.’ So you dig, you make efforts, and you wait, and it turns out that nope, there isn’t anything else to them. They really are that shallow.”

While the context of this comment is not the point, I do want to note that the people I was talking to at the time are in no way shallow, and I’m not sure if I made this clear at the time. As far as I far as I can tell, they are above average intelligence, talented, very funny, and deeply cool.  I forget that people can’t read my thoughts, and assume they know that I think they’re great. Thought osmosis, you know?

Anyway, later, I was thinking about depth and complexity, and it occurred to me that while being shallow is generally meant to denote someone who only cares about the superficial, and is certainly how I meant it at the time, there is another way to look at it. A lot can be said for someone who is transparent, sweet, simple and the same all the way through. In fact, the few people I know that are that way are incredibly precious to me for those very qualities.

So while I love the complexities of life and people who are deep and layered, I’ve decided that from now on I’m not totally discounting shallow.