“I Don’t Understand”

When someone tells you about a difficult situation or experience they’ve gone through, no one wants to be the one who thinks or says, “I don’t understand.”

We would rather say – “I see,” or “I know how you feel.” However, this is unlikely to help anyone if you do not actually understand what someone is going through.

I deeply want to understand, but I have seen that I often do not truly know what someone else is going through.

We often hear that the first step toward solving a problem is admitting that there is a problem. This makes sense, but what is the second step?

In many cases, the second step may be acknowledging that you do not understand the problem or situation. Sometimes the greatest obstacle to understanding is actually thinking that you understand something. Then when you expect something to work in a certain way and it does not, you are just left confused. Many of us will keep proceeding to try to resolve a problem, using our faulty understanding – and we will keep failing. In such cases, thinking we understand keeps us from making progress.

Let’s consider people’s life experiences – do we truly understand them?

Some experiences are so general that we have all had them in some way.

We have all been hurt in some way. And we have all felt a variety of emotions such as anger, fear, love, joy, embarrassment, pride, and so on.

Yet, we have also all had our own unique experiences that are different from everyone else’s.

Imagine someone who is drained, who has pushed himself to the limits every day – working two full-time jobs, parenting young children, and barely having time to eat, sleep, or go to the restroom during the day. Perhaps he is beyond the point of exhaustion, wanting to take a break but simply not having that option. He needs the jobs to support his family – and he believes that to do anything differently would be irresponsible.

If this person comes to me and shares his life experiences, it’s quite easy for me to use the words:

“I understand.” It even feels natural, as if that is what I am supposed to say.

However, it’s not true. And unfortunately, it’s not helpful to this person because it will be obvious to him that I could not possibly understand.

I have certainly worked hard, and I have even felt overworked, overstressed, and overburdened at times. But I have never been in the situation of needing to work multiple jobs to support a family – and I have certainly never felt that there was no option available to take a different path in my life. I have never lived one day in that type of lifestyle. So how could I possibly understand someone who was truly living that life every day?

If he were to explain his life to me, then empathy and imagination could help me comprehend what he is going through. But it may not give me a true understanding of his life.

Out of necessity in his life, he may skip lunch to commute from one job to the next. He may feel forced into neglecting his kids since he needs to work the hours he does to help support them. He may be past the point of exhaustion every single day, where he feels like a zombie going through the motions rather than a true human being. Perhaps he needs someone to talk to or to help him, but he spends all his time working and helping his family, and he rests very little.

These are life experiences where I don’t think you can truly understand them unless you have lived them.

Similar things can be said for various kinds of trauma. I have had my own challenging experiences in my life, but some people have experienced deep traumas that surpass any troubles I may have gone through.

Recently, when someone was telling me about his troubling life experiences, I found myself saying, “I understand.” Calmly, he told me that “you don’t understand.” And he was right. Certain experiences are too difficult to explain and even more difficult to truly understand.

Sometimes, we can listen or attempt to gain some awareness of what someone has gone through while admitting that we do not truly understand.

This lack of understanding is not a failure. It is actually a true step forward in your growth when you can admit this. When you can understand that you do not understand, you will be able to come to a more truthful place with yourself and the people around you.

At the heart of it, feeling the need to say “I understand” to everything is untruthful. Just because we want to understand does not mean that we do.

In general, in your life, the awareness of not understanding will help you see that there is always so much room to grow.

Arrogance and ignorance make for the worst combination of all. This would mean that you think you know it all, yet you know very little. We must avoid this.

Instead, we should be humble, aim to understand that there is much we do not understand, and hope to grow and understand just a little bit more, day by day.

If you want to get closer to people in your life and build meaningful connections, you will get there more efficiently when you admit that you do not understand their experiences fully. This will open up a window into true understanding.

Take a Breath

Take a slow and deep breath in and out right now and see how it feels.

It feels good. We should do it more often with conscious awareness.

Taking a breath can help avoid some tricky situations, as it provides an action that gives you a few seconds to relax and stop reacting to what is happening to you as if you were a machine.

I think we could all use this reminder to take a breath. Perhaps you’ve heard it before. Perhaps someone has told you to do this, and you thought it was silly. Today, try it out anyway and see what happens (especially if you didn’t do it above):

Take a Breath

Today, before you respond to hate with hate, take a breath.

Before you respond to toxicity with toxicity, take a breath.

Before you respond to someone who exaggerates or misrepresents the facts by doing the same thing yourself, take a breath.

Before you allow yourself to get triggered by the statements you read online, take a breath. And if this happens a lot, maybe take a break from visiting those sites.

Before you make someone feel inferior or as if they are not important, take a breath.

Before you think you know it all and that someone else knows nothing take a breath.

Before you feel the need to get back at someone who wronged you, take a breath.

Sure, life isn’t always that easy. But sometimes, we are just making things harder than they have to be. Sometimes we can feel like we must react and respond to everything happening around us, but that isn’t true.

Keep in mind that getting into heated debates with people is not a game with any real winners.

We have to be willing to take a step back when someone makes a hurtful comment and think:

• Does the commenter seem genuinely interested in having a calm and reasonable discussion? (He should not be obviously trying to provoke a reaction). If yes, proceed.

• Does the comment have some truth or basis in reality? If yes, proceed.

• Am I capable of having a reasonable discussion with this person? If yes, proceed.

• Will I know when to walk away if this ends up being an attempt to trigger me into getting angry and upset? If yes, proceed.

These are straightforward questions to ask yourself. If you cannot answer yes to all of these, do not get involved with people who make hurtful or potentially triggering comments. What is the point in walking into situations that will make you angry, upset, and feeling foolish?

Many of us have become obsessed with needing to be “right” and lost sight of whether being right even matters. If you “win” an argument by being toxic about it, then no one learns anything. You will end up becoming more set in your ways, and so will the person you argue with. Nothing is accomplished – in fact, it makes things worse somehow.

So the next time you feel the need to be right, take a breath.

Anytime someone does or says something that may have been intended to provoke or upset you, take a breath first.

Take more breaths in your day – nothing bad will come from it.

If someone asks why you are taking breaths, tell them it is to create a pause in between thought and action, or action and reaction, so that you can see and act with clarity. Encourage them to do it too.

Think – what would happen if the entire planet took a moment to take a breath at the same time? It would be a moment of peace and happiness, wouldn’t it?

Expanding Empathy

It’s important in these times more than ever that we expand our empathy. This means that we should aim to understand what other people are going through, not just on an intellectual level but on the level of emotion and feeling.

Let’s consider what empathy is. It is feeling and knowing what someone else is going through on a deep, emotional, personal level.

At its base level, to empathize, you must ask yourself, have I ever gone through a similar experience as such a person? (e.g., next time you witness suffering, ask yourself this question). Or, to go a bit deeper, you may ask if you can understand what this person is feeling and going through.

If you have had a similar experience, you may possess a natural empathy for this person, as you can easily understand what they are going through. When we consider family and close friends, we can empathize somewhat more easily, as we have many shared experiences. We are also much more likely to have either gone through similar pains as them or to have a close connection to their pains just through our close connection with them.

The above forms of empathy are not to be taken for granted, despite that for some people, these sorts of empathy come more naturally. I believe that people should focus first on empathizing with those closest to them to build up their empathy skills. We can always aim to improve our empathic abilities, perhaps by aiming to listen more deeply, to observe body language more closely, or to feel what someone is feeling more deeply.

However, in these times more than ever, we must expand our empathy beyond just our close family and friends to neighbors, strangers, and people who are outside of our affiliations (outside of our religion, race, socioeconomic status, etc.). This is a challenge, but one that will pay great dividends for society.

Particularly, I would like to emphasize that those in power should empathize more with those who have less power. Those of a dominant or predominant class should empathize more with those not in a dominant class. Men should empathize more with women, and people with access to great wealth and resources should empathize more with those who do not have these things. A key reason for this suggestion is to restore balance in society. Those who are powerless are forced to understand powerful people as they run the world. Those who are minorities are forced to understand the predominant groups as they run the world. Women are forced to understand men, as historically, the world has been run by them. We should come to understand the inherent privilege and perhaps injustice in this, and those in the predominant or dominant classes should take a moment from their days regularly to consider life from another angle.

Much of the pain and suffering in this world may arise just from those in minority or less privileged groups feeling that they are not heard, taken seriously, or seriously considered – that they are just invisible and irrelevant, which is one of the worst feelings a person could have. In reality, all sides should empathize with each other more, but it will help restore balance when the highly privileged work to empathize with the less privileged.

We should learn that empathy is a key step for us to take actions that help one another. Those who fail to empathize will see no reason to take such actions, of course. When we do learn to empathize more deeply, we will be prepared to build better societies for ourselves and our families.

On your journey to expanding your empathy, first aim to empathize with yourself (treat yourself with love and kindness, and not just judgment), then your nuclear family, extended family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, strangers like you, strangers unlike you (e.g., with different backgrounds and worldviews), then to animals you are familiar with, then to animals you are unfamiliar with, then to all life, then to all nonlife, then to all.

At the final stages of expanding your empathy, you will see yourself in everyone. You come to understand that there are only so many emotions or combinations of them, and we are all capable of having them. When you see yourself in everyone, you will do your best to help everyone who walks into your life, as if it were your brother or sister or even yourself.

To the practical person who thinks these are nice thoughts, but we cannot help and save everyone, I would say that my focus is on getting us to progress in stages. Progress doesn’t happen overnight but in gradual stages. It is up to us to choose that journey of improvement for ourselves.

Here are some techniques we can use to begin to expand our empathy as communities:

• When you see suffering, take a moment to consider what this person is going through deeply. Imagine what their day may have been like. Then from there, imagine what their whole life may have been like.

• Read or listen to first-hand stories written from the minority or oppressed perspective. This means that the author should be a minority or oppressed, or the author should at least have interviewed such people.

• Read historical accounts that honestly try to understand the perspective of minority and oppressed peoples – this may include looking into Native American history, African American history, Hispanic American history, the history and struggles of women, etc.

• Try to make a meaningful human connection with someone outside your socioeconomic status, with different world views, a different religion, etc. Do not feel the need to convince them or to be convinced of anything. Just open your mind and learn why and how this person is the way he is.

• Watch international movies or movies directed by people from different backgrounds and cultures. This may involve watching movies with subtitles.

• Learn another language – if you try to learn and study a language seriously, you will learn directly what it is like to be the outsider, the one who feels foolish, does not understand, and is sometimes mistreated. Imagine visiting another country and only speaking their language in a broken/basic way. This is a humbling experience.

• Listen to music from other cultures and regions, perhaps some that is in another language. If it is in another language, look up what the lyrics mean.

When you successfully expand your empathy, you will become interested in engaging in more community acts of kindness.