I seek to understand.
All my life I’ve been trying to understand. Everything.
I’ve been trying to understand simple things like radios and walkmans and more complex things, like relationships and human behaviour in general.
In most situations, I don’t follow the normal route of action or reaction, because I want to understand its insides and unbiased results of my alternate route.
Some people call this strange or weird. I suppose it is. If nothing else, it is not ordinary, and that is against which everything is judged, is it not?
Is it merely a tendency of thoughtful insight? Is it an abnormal hunger for something I’ll never be able to attain? Is it the way I learn, or is it learning itself?
I’ll tell you what it is.
All my life I’ve been searching for reasons. The reasons I never knew my parents as parents together, but parents apart. The reasons why I felt like I didn’t belong. The reasons why I didn’t have to try too hard…yet should have tried so much harder.
Justification?
Anyone can justify anything. Virtually anything can be related to anything else.
Forget that for now, because we need to understand.
Understanding is relative of course, but we’ll forget that too. Let’s just say understanding is absolute.
Perhaps this is my ‘seek to be understood’ phase?
True understanding is not easily gained. Often we say we understand, only to scratch the surface of the given issue’s complexities. I believe a paradigm shift must occur for true understanding to occur.
A person must rearrange their beliefs in favour of new and unfamiliar ones. The mind must be absolutely open to accept that another way, beyond your current path, is possible.
The Art of Understanding is made up of many parts. Here are some of the points I will touch upon in my quest to (understand and) be understood:
The Empty Cup – Live as though you can fill your mind with knowledge at any given moment.
The Message and the Medium – The path you must take towards understanding must follow some assumed constants. A message can be overshadowed by improper use of a certain medium of communication.
Listening and Sensitivity – Inflections in the voice, tone, body language, rhythm and the words you choose to use are all apart of active listening for greater understanding. Being sensitive to minor abnormalities or changes gives you greater insight into the true meaning of what is being communicated.
The Sum of the Parts – Understanding how smaller parts fit together to create or make a larger entity or situation will bring you closer to an understanding of the sum.
Think Like Them – Role playing, judging actions and reactions, understanding character and motivation, incentives for behaviour and their processes to better understand the world. Knowing your subject allows you to execute your skills effectively.
The Tidy Box – Your perfect image, their perfect image. Each play off each other, causing a lifetime of inaccurate responses and feelings. Break away from your tidy box and see through theirs.
Look From the Outside, In – Keep a good perspective as though you were not immersed in the situation. Seeing how the greater picture of how things relate to each other and how they might affect each other will only prove to improve your understanding.
Think From the Inside, Out – Understanding the core values that make up your own and other people’s true selves will help you gauge motivation and bias.
Find the Pattern, Break the Pattern – Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is crazy. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is crazy.
Learn, to Teach – We often push ourselves, or force ourselves into a different state of insight when we take the perspective of a teacher. Whatever we are seeking to understand, will often come through stronger when using this technique.
Imagine – There is no greater weapon than this, to be used in the path towards understanding.
Changes are Constant – Changes must be embraced. Change is important for growth.
These are only brief explanations. I will expand and give examples to illustrate each idea.
Does this make any sense so far?
