Searching for Understanding

I have been doing a lot of catching up lately when it comes to my blog but one of the things on my mind has been the importance that everyone has in being understood.  At times I will consider myself a good listener and that I shouldn't be worrying myself but then I realize that the reason why I get so stressed out or feel like I still need to talk things out is because I don't think I was really understood.  I want to make sure people understand my reasons and my motivation.  It is for this same reason why my mom and other women don't like it when in conversations we as men can "listen" without really paying attention and then parrot back details.  Women really want to be understood and not fixed.  They want someone to listen and they are not always asking for advice.

When we are in conflict, I sometimes loose focus on the issue and start worrying more about explaining my side and trying to make someone understand where I am coming from.  I am in all reality trying to justify my actions up to this point.  And when we are justifying things, we have gotten to the point where we stop choosing to do what we knew or felt was right and we started thinking of people as objects.  When I start comparing myself, people can't be compared unless we are looking at some sort of status symbol or statistic.  I can't ignore some one's plea unless I can justify myself by thinking I am better or worse than someone else.  In those moments I am pitting themselves or even the world against me and my pride has gotten the better of me.  There is also the idea that I deserve something or I want to be seen as something.  Again, these paradigms are all about me and I treat people as either obstacles or tools to help me get where I want to be.  And whenever I try to justify myself in these ways, the behaviors or actions that I am opposing I actually encourage the very things I do not want.

If I want peace and understanding then I need to remember the people I am working with.  I can not classify or discriminate.  I can not group or disassociate their needs as people as obstacles for my own success.  Happiness does not come by things and if I want to encourage others to treat me as a real person and respect me, then many times I need to be the bigger man and do the same for them even when it is not being reciprocated.  However, treating them as people does not mean that I need to condone actions that I oppose or even to stand by and do nothing.  My heart just needs to continually be at peace with them and see them as people.  If I look to understand them then I can make peace with them.  From the poem, "Invictus," we can see how the human heart looks to be a free spirit and so by trying to conquer the unconquerable soul we will fail and create more strife than good.

Not too long ago, I made the very mistake I am describing.  I classified an individual based on what others had told me.  I had judged him.  And when I spoke poorly of him that eventually got back to him as it always does through the grapevine and there was a lot of exaggeration and a lot of things were miscommunicated and taken to an extreme.  So in order to try to repair some of the damage I went and talked to him and apologized to him in person.  It was hard and I got cussed out for a decent length of time.  Some of the things I was chewed out for where merely a chance for him to release emotions and feelings he had pent up for some time that had nothing to do with me but in the end, there was a bit that I definitely did deserve.  But in the end, I feel like we were able to replace feelings of disregard and contempt with ones of understanding and respect.  I definitely made a serious mistake.  You don't understand a person unless you are willing and able to get to know them a bit.  The only reason you don't love someone is because you haven't gotten to know them at all.  I guess what I am trying to put out there is we all have a need to be understood as well as having a need to be loved.  The only way to overcome our issues is to be willing to do both to some degree and sometimes this comes in the form of an apology and forgiveness.