Better To Understand Than To Be Understood

When I was eight, my mother didn't let me have candy. One day on the school bus, a girl had this huge bag of gummy worms. I was sure she'd share if I asked nicely, but she refused. Enraged, I snatched a worm and ate it in front of her. She started to cry, and something broke inside me. At that moment, I realized, in my child's way, that harm is not subjective. I had hurt someone, and it couldn't be undone.

We're all born with an innate sense of what causes harm, yet we quickly learn to override this sense with reason and narrative. Psychologist Brad Blanton calls it “making a case. We learn to do this young: “I know staying up late will make me sick, but Juanita’s mom lets her.” “I know hitting Sebastian is wrong, but he started it.”

These self-justifications can grow into a bullshit-habit that harms not only others, but ourselves. Soon, we make a case for staying in relationships that diminish us. We make a case for staying at jobs we hate. The more we listen to the lawyer-mind, the further we drift from our gut-sense of what really hurts.

As a teenager in Catholic school, I learned a line from the St. Francis Prayer: “It is better to understand than to be understood.” At the time, I dismissed it as the kind of self-denial I disliked in Christianity.

But over time, the meaning changed for me. For I've seen that, when I feel most misunderstood, there's usually something about my own behavior that I do not yet understand. It's not about self-denial. It's about letting go of the story I want others to validate so I can see clearly how I hurt myself.

I've realized, for example, that my narrative about friends never showing up for me hides a habit of refusing their help so I can be The Reliable One. My narrative about being unrecognized in my work hides a pattern of avoiding visibility and feedback.

And so, whoever you are, my wish for you is that, yes, you find people who make you feel understood. But even better, that you understand your own actions, because it is that clarity, more than any external sympathy, that will set you free.

Anonymous, "Francis Preaches to Animals" (1626)