You Don't Need to Understand

My actions, beliefs, and choices may not make sense to you.  We are human, predispositioned to judge one another.  I'm the only one who has to walk in my shoes and silence my heart and head each night to find peaceful rest.  What rattles and enrages you might roll off of my back, and vice versa.  Thank God for that.  I know that, from time to time, I need the insight of someone who feels differently: to talk me off the ledge, to calm me, or even to prompt me to stand up for something important.

When disease strikes, when children are gunned down in a school, when a couple divorces, when unpopular business decisions are made...we ask "why?"  Maybe it's our need for control.  We can better deal with unexpected information if we know what caused it?  What creates the need to understand one another?  We speak of closure when a relationship ends, and what we really mean is that we need to understand why.  It helps us to heal, to process, to synthesize all the data in our minds. 

I wonder why we spend so much time analyzing others' choices, trying to make sense of what they are doing?  We get so riled up about others' life choices, when often it's not our business and may not even impact us in the slightest way.  A lawmaker wants to legislate what two lovers do in their bedroom.  A mother wants input in her son and daughter-in-law's family planning.  A father wants to influence his son's athletic choices.  A manager wants an employee to do things their way, even if another way is efficient and successful.

Some of my deepest and most challenging human encounters have bloomed by learning to accept the fact that I can never fully understand you and you can never fully understand me.  And while I might not make the same choices for myself as you do, the good news is that I don't have to understand or even agree with you.  I'm probably still going to try...probably going to ask questions to help me understand.  But I can choose to love or at least accept you anyway, because I'm not perfect either.  Sometimes I don't even understand myself, so I certainly don't expect you to understand me.

What is love? 

Love is when one person knows all of your secrets...

your deepest, darkest, most dreadful secrets

of which no one else in the world knows...

and yet in the end,

that one person does not think any less of you;

even if the rest of the world does."

~Unknown