Summary
Learn to accept that other people exist and other people have very different lives, perceptions, understandings, and lived experiences than you and that they aren't invalid just because they don't match yours. You are not the center. Get over yourself.
#FirstCoffeeThoughts
We can only ever be ourselves and our experience in the world is only truly real to us.
Everyone around you can only observe you through their lenses and filters and that vision of you is going to be distorted and inaccurate and ultimately “you” from “their” perspective which is still not you at all.
Your reality cannot be perceived by anyone else other than you and vice versa.
The levels of understanding required to fully comprehend someone else’s reality are … extensive.
Extensive doesn’t mean impossible. It just means the amount of effort and skills needed is probably more than most people truly have time, training, and energy for …
We’re talking education, empathy, ego-less comprehension, lack of bias, lack of projection, foundations of logic, reason, and an ability to separate self from all perception of the outside world which is … not impossible but NEARLY so.
Can you fully see them outside of your own lenses? No.
Can you truly understand someone? No.
So how can we understand others?
Listening? Not really. Even listening is done through filters and involves a process of words being translated through personal dictionaries. If you know the game telephone then you know that misinterpretations happen due to the very filters I just mentioned and preferred connotation.
Trust? Perhaps … but trust isn’t freely given and has to be earned.
If someone tells you what their reality is like you could just simply trust in their truth and accept it as their truth and make that truth part of your new reality.
Reality is always changing as new information becomes presented to us …
(Well, for some people it is, for others who refuse to adapt to new information I can’t speak on them.)
If you trust someone else’s explanation of their reality enough to make it part of yours … that is acceptance without needing to understand.
Understanding requires too much agreement, compromise, and mental work to dissolve all the filters and biases and perception problems that people have.
Accepting what is offered is simple. Someone is gifting you insight on how they see and experience the world. It’s their truth that they are sharing with you.
Accepting other people’s truths is more valuable than understanding.
Accepting is more valuable because it means you are allowing someone else’s truth to become part of your personal reality and in that sense you are opening up the possibility for yourself that they is more for you to know and experience.
Accepting is more valuable because it means you’re not asking that person to convince you or teach you or prove to you who they are and what they are about, you simply accept them how they are and that becomes your new reality … with them in it.
Part of accepting other people’s truth means accepting that people are sometimes drastically different from you and you don’t need to understand why or how that is. You simply need to decide whether you accept them as a whole person or not.
The only understanding that is truly required is understanding how you can be a better support for that person and that usually is as simple as listening to what they tell you they need and simply doing it.
It’s not that complicated.
You don’t need to understand everything. You don’t need to agree or disagree with everything. You don’t need to insert your reality into everyone else’s.
You can share your reality.
Someone can share their reality with you.
Agreeing upon what each other shares and accepting it is what healthy relationships can be built upon.
Understanding requires chipping off parts of your reality in order to form agreed upon unions with other people’s realities and most people refuse to do that.
Understanding requires people give up too much of things they hold dear or cannot let go of due to beliefs or grooming or indoctrination.
1. 𝘮𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴
Those things rarely happen between strangers and they also don’t happen between people who believe their reality is the only one or the most important one.
2. 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥
This is easy. This doesn’t require agreement or union or compromise. This is just receiving a gift.
You don’t have to understand someone to accept them or their reality. It’s actually not necessary at all.
You won’t simply accept someone else’s reality because you subscribe to the selfish delusion that yours is the default. You need to “wrap your head around it” because you need to find a way to justify accepting someone or something outside of your personal reality.
Learn to accept that other people exist and other people have very different lives, perceptions, understandings, and lived experiences than you and that they aren’t invalid just because they don’t match yours.
You are not the center.
Get over yourself.
