Understanding by all means…
Every day in our lives, we encounter different people from all walks of life. Some are good, some are mysterious, some are bad and some are hard to understand. There is a drive in us to understand as much as we can. We do not like things we cannot figure out. We don’t like people we cannot understand. As much as possible, we want to sort, analyze, and understand things. But is it really possible to understand everything? Is it really possible to understand everybody? Much of our dilemma and suffering comes from that. We want to know how people will react. We want to understand everybody. We want to satisfy ourselves – believing that we can somehow predict what’s in other people’s minds.
This is very visible in the lives of a couple. No matter how long they have been living together, sometimes it is hard for a husband and wife to understand each other. It is also present in school. No matter how hard the professor explains the lessons, somehow a student finds it difficult to understand. The same thing happens in hospitals. An experienced doctor, in some way, cannot determine the root cause of a patient’s disease or illness.
Now, the question is, is there a need for us to understand people? Or are we just being arrogant? Arrogance has been defined as claiming for ourselves what is not ours, claiming for ourselves what we have not worked for, what does not rightfully belong to us. Maybe we can say that we are not really arrogant in the literal sense of the word. We might say we are not “mataray”; we are, in fact, mild-mannered. But aren’t we, all of us, arrogant because we want to understand; we want to claim for ourselves what is not really ours?
To understand everyone is hard. We have to experience first what they have been through for us to understand. “We must be in their shoes” before we can say we fully understand them. Understanding needs time. It cannot be rushed. It should be ripened and it must be seasoned. No need to become arrogant…
Amen.
[...] Understanding by all means… August 20101 comment [...]
2010 in review « dodingdaga said this on January 3, 2011 at 7:53 pm |
[...] Understanding by all means… August 20101 comment Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)#1 Page and Top 3 Posts In 2009Reboot11,000!!! [...]
2010 in review « dodingdaga said this on January 3, 2011 at 7:53 pm |
To want to understand someone or something is not due to one’s arrogants, rather it is due to wanting to become better than what we are currently. Understanding gives significant benefit to oneself and others. It create peace and harmony for example and even forgiveness that make the world go around. You are right, everyone has limitation of understanding everything but dont limit yourself by stopping to try to understand everything and everyone. When you do this, the chance to learn the impossible stops. Yes, you can accept what you cannot change but why? All you are doing is trying to understand why it cannot be change… that is hardly a challenge.