In a client workshop yesterday, One person was trying to explain something to others, it was his life story, and others were listening in rapt attention, the conversation was often punctuated with “I understand”, sometimes verbal but often non verbal nods. As I sat and watched, sometimes the heads nodded more vigorously, at other times the head was just moving side to side, and yet with some others it was hung, or at times even thrown back with an audible sigh. Judging by how long this person continued to share, I can safely assume he felt understood.
And he later also shared this explicitly.
This business of “understanding’ perhaps is the most complex of phenomena. Perhaps even a higher order than love. the scary part is is these two ca often be mutually exclusive.
All our life as soon as we learn to turn our heads we are trying to do just this. Understand our world. The sounds, taste, texture. As we grow, only the content changes are still trying to do just that. Understand.
Perhaps because our survival depends on it. It gets super sticky and tricky when it comes to People
I have been grappling with it. It is at best a short hand, It stands for so many things, used in so many ways, and is perceived in such myriad of ways. One can never really be sure. And yet, we know that feeling of “Being understood”. Even in the absence of any I understand
I have been studying this word now for last 2-3 years, and I still don’t quite understand.
It is important, because it is at the soul of relating. So many relationships are flourishing or strained, just because somebody understands or doesn’t.
We all have somebody who ‘gets us’ without trying to explain or sometimes even actually saying it and swiftly acts differently. And we also have people who we have tried very hard to “explain” and now given up with – “he/she will never understand me”.
After this point, it feels downhill. Slowly moving toward apathy and finally disconnection.
It is important to see this because, often the others feel they are acting out their understanding, and they are being understating and how I don’t understand. Phew!! It is exhausting..
Just want to say, I Understand is perhaps the shortest, most diverse, and
most mis- understood phrase, according to me.
Some of the Context and meanings, according to the dictionary..
- To be aware of the meaning of: Comprehend, apprehend, fathom, follow, grasp, discern, note, register, see, sense, absorb distinguish, get to the bottom of.
- To believe, based on information : Believe, accept ,consider, assume, expect, gather, estimate, postulate, forecast, take for granted, be led to believe come.
- To demonstrate empathy : Acknowledge, identify with, relate to, be cognizant of, be wise to commiserate with, be alive to be sensitive, put oneself in another’s
- – To impute meaning that is not explicitly stated: Accept, appreciate, recognise, conceive, appraise, entertain, hazard, trust, feel watch
- To have a strong connection with: identify connect associate, be on the same wavelength as, commune feel at one feel for feel togetherness, have a rapport.
- To have met, be acquainted or familiar with: Know, apprehend, comprehend, endure, experience, grasp have a taste of
- To request that one tolerate another’s foibles, ignorance, or impoliteness: Forgive, condone, accept, excuse, bear, allow, endure, indulge, sanction pardon, make allowances for
- Pay attention to: Listen, to pay attention, to take notice of, attend to, regard, note ,observe mind notice follow
If it already feels overwhelming, its because It is.
When we say I understand or you don’t understand, we are saying many different things, behind it.
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. Henry David Thoreau
Here are some ways I have found, which help me really become aware as I listen to myself and others in conversations.
Shorthand
Often, “I understand” accompanied with vigorous head nodding, is a shorthand for..
- This happened to me also
- I have also felt this..
- It fits my logic
- It matches my worldview
- I get it
- I also have a similar story
- So true, I agree
- It makes sense in my view of your situation you would do that
- It fits the description of symptoms I have read, learnt about
- You are a human being like me, by virtue of that, this is the same.
And sometimes, “I understand” with different head movement and tone may mean..
- I resign..
- I give up
- I am detaching
- I am colluding under the guise of empathy
- I am avoiding confrontation
- I am abdicating responsibility
- I am choosing to be inauthentic
- I knew you are like this….. judgement(s)
- I am not curious anymore.
Notice In many of these the focus shifted to YOU. No longer with the one who we are trying to understand.
Diagnosis.
I get tired of people being reduced to a psychological “phenomena” (oh it’s a text book case)Or a therapized “understanding”. As if a bunch of labels could solve the ‘problem’ — (projection, introjection, victim, perpetrator) . You get the drift.
This one particularly infuriates me, even when I know the intention is Noble. I feel like a field rat, who is no longer in the field. In my line of work especially this is a really dangerous professional hazard.
It a bit like, some years ago my son and I had gone for a movie, at that time he was studying filmmaking. And he just could not enjoy the movie It became academic.
I often feel suffocated in such compulsive need to understand, situations. Things people, artefacts animals, “Everything” needs to be Understood. Meaning put in a box, referred to some case or studies and then put away. No Mystery is tolerated.
It’s almost disrespectful.
Imagine, you look at a plant or a leaf or someone sitting with earphones – and Someone say oh this is “papaya plant” – Done. By knowing it’s name we feel we understand it. How preposterous.
What is lost, is the curiosity- to touch, hold, feel, learn, relate deeply..
Few days ago in a workshop, people were sharing who they had become post Covid, and many “joked” about how they had to survive living with their spouses. A woman shared, how every time she heard this, she said “How I wish I had this problem”. She lost her husband few years ago. And she now just had her daughter. Later she was sharing with me, how she gets angry when some people came to her and said, “I understand” – Have you also lost your spouse? She asked, and then there was silence… She cried again…
No, no one can truly say I understand. And Yet it is also a sense of helplessness. That we try to cover up with that phrase. We want to convey how deeply we feel, but lack the vocabulary and ended up mumbling “I understand”.
We are so poor at demonstrating empathy often. I feel sad and often concerned.
“If you have to Understand me, You have to let go of doing just that.
Because in your Understanding – I am Imprisoned.”
(excerpt form poem ‘Madness’)
Rhea
Maybe if we finally surrendered our “ego” and admitted, we actually don’t Understand, and admitted even to ourselves that, it felt horrible, the not knowing what to do . Would then perhaps start the connection.
I have experienced this, a few weeks ago, I was in a really bad shape with the Bangladesh issue and crying. I called my friend Rajesh and sobbed, I was sharing my frustration. He listened and just said, “I don’t know what to say”. And was silent. And yet I felt understood. I did not need advice, or suggestions. I just need to be heard.
So often we make it about us, in these moments. We have to convey our “competence at understanding. It’s very subtle but the focus suddenly goes from the person who is going through it , to the one who is trying to understand.
Control
There is also the insidious other side. When people say – “You DON’T understand me” repeatedly.
This can also be an unconscious Control drama. And it can be quite manipulative. Most often when people say this, they are saying I want you to understand in the EXACT way I want to be understood, which if you ask me I won’t know the answer to ,but still..
All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. Blaise Pascal
Kids, specially teenagers do that so often – They will storm out saying You will never understand. It can be quite exasperating and exhausting since you are trying very hard in your own way “To understand”.
Or even in other relationships the dangling sword of, you will never understand gets used to keep the other on egg shells and guilty. Till eventually somebody just resign and moves on.
Sher (Couplets) in HIndi
Samajh Samajh Ke Samajh Ko Samjho
Samjh Samjhana Bhee Ek Samajh Hai
Samajh Samjh Ke Jo Na Samjhe
Meri Samjh Mein Wo Naasamajh HaiTranslation.
Slowly try to understand the Understanding –
To understand, understand – Is also an understanding
Those who don’t understand even after understating
Are, silly, according to my understanding
Perhaps, We need to think if we really want. To understood. And to Understand. Because when this happens, this deep propound experience of Understanding – It changes us a people, irreversibly. We are no longer a prisoner to whatever story we were telling, ourselves or others.
It can be scary, if this story no matter how horrible has become a part of ones identity. Letting it go may put us in a liminal space. And maybe even call out our bluff.
Perhaps we need to ask ourselves the cost of trying hard Not to be Understood. As counter intuitive as it sounds, it happens all the time. We do that in many ways. We use complicated language, complex models, long winding sentences, abstractions, too much rational explanation etc etc.
Isolation, aloneness, and alienation and continued feeling of victimhood could be some outcomes.
Perhaps we need to take the pains to Listen with curiosity without running away in our minds, afraid that if we listen we might change.
We each have the opportunity to get out of our stories of help other do the same, if we are willing to be vulnerable in our Not understanding.
Perhaps we need to focus son understanding Ourselves, and in that we may have the container to hold others.
And then maybe give up trying to force fit understanding, to make ourselves feel better. Less anxious and helplessness.
Maybe …
In our silent mutual grief, confusion, helplessness, if we surrender to the moment. Then by grace maybe, some semblance of shared understanding may arise, without words.
Hopefully healing both.
I am learning, sometimes the hard way, often honest Silence is way more eloquent than words uttered in fear or confusion. Perhaps we need to be honest, and say I love you, or I can’t stand you, instead of ..”I Understand”. Nothing can be more ambiguous.
Maybe it time we turned inwards. And be a little more tentative before we say “I Understand”. And maybe more patient when somebody is trying to.
I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.
Hermann Hesse