“I understand you!”
But do you? Many people say this phrase often, but I tend to disbelieve them. Understanding involves “contradictions”.
UNDERSTAND YOURSELF
– In order to understand someone else, I must FIRST understand… MYSELF. But to understand oneself, if done correctly is a difficult task. You have to metaphorically take yourself apart, your psyche, into the smallest elements and then “put yourself together” and understand how those parts make a whole…
I pose some questions to you:
- Why do you believe, what you believe? Again – why do YOU believe what you believe?
- Why are certain things “right” and certain things “wrong”?
- Why is it wrong to murder in cold blood?
- Why is it wrong to steal or cheat?
- Why is it wrong to leave your home in a mess?
- Why is it wrong to leave the toilet seat up?
People have so many “rules” about what is right and what is wrong… but how many honestly question if those things are truly (in a Cosmic or Universal sense) right or wrong… or simply believe what they have “learned”…
And how many are willing to accept that many of our beliefs about right and wrong are simply a choice we made to choose… TOTALLY without LOGIC!
I left Christianity because so many “Christians” told me that I needed to “just believe!”…
UNDERSTAND SOMEONE ELSE
– Most people are whole unwilling to admit this, but the vast majority of us are terrible, TERRIBLE at understanding others…
We are so quick to place others in nice and neat “categories”. We love to take one aspect about a person (and for the more “sophisticated” three or four) and voila! we CREATE a whole complete person within our minds!
We instantly understand all (or enough of his or her) hopes, fears, wishes, etc. We can “completely” relate to that other person!
BUT, OF COURSE, as my sarcasm is trying to help to illustrate – PEOPLE ARE NOT SO SIMPLE… Not so easily summarized!
If you want to understand someone else, you have to perform a SIMILAR process as you should be doing with ourself…
You must discover all the different pieces of someone else and then see how those piece make a whole.
DRAFTING THE SONATA OF UNDERSTANDING
– Now let’s be honest… when we are in a room with another person or other people… the most interesting person in that room – usually – is ME! (“I”)
Yes, I think about the other person, but I my thoughts have a tendency refocus on myself and what I want (to say… to do).
“So hurry up and say what you need to say! Already!!!”
BUT the “SECRET” is this:
We must focus on the other person, but not quickly “jump to conclusions”… And when we inevitably do, we must understand that our model of that person is only a First Draft… later to be revised as we get new information.
– Now… how to become a MASTER at understanding!!!
We must use our understand of our own selves and our motivation to try to understand the connection between
- Motivations
- Perceptions
- Actions / Inactions
Then and only then… Can we START to understand… someone else…
Divining Humanity 