“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984
This is sort of a sequel to language.
We are usually loved by so many people - parents, friends, siblings, teachers, significant others, mentors, etc. But to love someone doesn’t mean that we have to understand them. I keep being told that people can’t understand me, that they don’t get me. I’ve never felt like I’m someone that can’t be understood by others because I feel like I usually say what I feel, but I also know that I can shut down often and that I don’t always have the right words to say. I don’t often speak by words but by actions. By my writings (Which would be words), but also by fist bumps, high fives, hugs, nods, with my eyes. If you don’t know what to look for then I don’t speak very much and maybe that’s hard to understand for some people that only use words to convey what they mean.
When I was in high school learning ASL, I learned a lot about what eyes say, about what body posture means, about what to look for when talking to a deaf person who can’t hear you, who can’t understand you. I learned about someone who was deaf but learned how to talk by watching how other people talk. They had a Brooklyn accent because they talked like the people around them since they learned from the people around them. They wanted to be understood, so they learned the language that would help them be understood.
I’ve talked about this in my language article, but when I was younger, I took speech therapy since I couldn’t speak very well and my Rs sounded like Ws. I always felt frustrated when people commented on my speaking ability since I was working so hard at it and still couldn’t get it right. It didn’t come naturally to me. People still understood what I was saying but sometimes it took them a few tries to understand and I had to repeat myself often. I think that’s part of the reason I’m so interested in Psychology because there’s something special about understanding people and wanting to learn more about them and why they’ve made the choices they’ve made. Why they’ve turned into the person they are.
One thing that I’ve been trying to understand and learn about is different ways of reading and writing and speaking. Each discipline has their own way of talking and thinking and speaking and I want to be able to incorporate that into my writing and be able to write in all of those different formats. Lawyer speech is very different from academic speech which is different from normal speech. They are like different languages from each other and I want to have a fascination with languages. I’m still developing it, but the more I learn about languages, the more I fall in love with them and what they can do and say about each person and each culture. They really are fascinating, but I didn’t always think that.
Understanding people and meeting them where they’re at, I think that’s one of the greatest forms of love that can be given. One of my old teachers used to say ‘I’m usually not interested in something until I start to understand it.’ We get frustrated when we don’t understand something, when we don’t get something right away and that can manifest in how we talk to others, in how we speak. I’m learning that I don’t understand why people get drunk, but I do. I understand it a little too much and I think that scares me more than not understanding it at all. I was reading a quote from Carl Jung that said “everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” I can get really irritated with others and every time I need to remind myself to breathe and to try to understand them a little more. Why would they do something like that and what is motivating their actions? I think that asking this and trying to understand them a little more gives us more insight into ourselves and coming from a place of understanding instead of persecution is the best step that we can take.
Good luck with your journey and I hope that you have a great week.
Best,
Alex Risdall :)
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