Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Understanding and Being Understood

If I am fortunate enough to experience much failure, and little success, as do most of us, and if I allow those failures to teach me, which can take many years of one's life, then I can begin putting into place some learnings that cannot be taken away from me.

Among these can be the transition from the primal need to be understood, to the more valuable and productive position of trying to understand.

When I was young, my relationship to the Universe was like this: ME > Universe. It was my endless task to enter conflict in which I challenged the Other to understand me and all that I struggled for and hoped to accomplish. In doing, I unwittingly walked the tightrope of self destruction, for I was inviting others, as representatives of the Universe, to teach me my actual position within it, which so happens to be infinitesimal.

This happened over and over again, but as my chosen field happened to be understanding and helping others in their conflicts with one another, I was also afforded the more objective view of what happens within those conflicts.

It began to emerge in my view that much, if not all, conflict arises out of one party's need to be understood by the Other. Nations, states, departments within corporations, people in friendships, families, marriages, all inevitably come to the point of challenging the Other to understand and make good on their individual or collective needs.

What is the result? You guessed it- the Other pushes back with an assertion of HER needs. "So, you want that? Yes, but do you not see that what I (We) need is THIS? And if you do not give it to us, we will take it, one way or another, or at least we will no longer deal with you?"

To which the first party, still committed to being understood, as is the second, reasserts the original need, and so forth and so on to the bloody end, which is really not an end at all, but only a return to the beginning from which a new cycle of emotional, or physical violence arises.

The cycle truly ends when one party gets out of the business of needing to be understood, suspends that need, and then tries to understand what is being communicated from the Other. Now, the Other finds no barriers, no resistance, but instead discovers a willing partner in dialog. The first party may not have given up at all on what they need, but holds it in suspension, comprehending that if those needs will EVER be realized, it will only be after the Other has felt fully understood, and is now in a state of willingness to cooperate.

This is one of the biggest, most subtle, but nevertheless most important transitions we make on our way to maturity. It is an acknowledgment of our place in the Universe, and the beginning of a true understanding of its depths and mystery, and how we belong within it.

The relationship with the Universe is now this: Universe> Me.

What to take away? How about this: if you find yourself in an endless round of conflict, see if you support it by continually asserting and reasserting your needs, trying to be understood. And then conduct this experiment: What happens if you fall silent, but attentive, working to understand what the Other has to say?