“But, He/She Just Doesn’t Understand!”

Sound familiar? It probably reflects the instinct within all of us, especially in the moment of relational injustice.

And yet, there comes a time in all our lives when we’re best accepting others’ best.

Although we will see some others’ insipid attempts to empathise with or understand us—their responses not coming close to our initial expectations—we have to accept this as the best we’ll get from them. It’s as good as their best, even if it doesn’t seem anything close to what we’d expect.

We can’t control other people. We can try and we will fail, inevitably, ultimately.

‘My Best’ Versus ‘Their Best’ – Two Entirely Different Issues

How can we hold someone to a standard only we, personally, can attain?

This is a clear infraction toward madness; and still, it’s a routine problem marring rapport everywhere.

Here is the lesson for all of us. It beckons constant reflection until we finally stop contorting our relationships to our advantage.

My best aligns to a strict set of values and beliefs that only lines up for me. Even still, I am often dissonant with myself, debating the merits of many issues, trying to resolve them so I can act in this world.

It’s the same for you. You see the world differently. We can live with that can’t we? We both have to.

It’s a key job we all have—to resolve the cognitive dissonance within our minds, and also within our hearts—indeed, often between the mind and heart. We need to create our own answers; those meaningful to us personally.

The issues you have difficulty with might seem a synch for me; likewise, I get all in a knot and you know the way out. It’s almost laughable, but it’s true.

Where Does This Get Us To?

When we ultimately commit to only fixing our issues and, at the same time, we commit to living with the issues of others, we’re finally resolving how to live maturely in the world at large.

(The only exception to this is when we have a role in life where we’re paid or we’re accountable to challenge i.e. as an employer/boss or a parent of adult children. Yet, we challenge respectfully, always accepting that change for others is the sole responsibility of the other people in question.)

We might then be tempted to get frustrated with others who don’t follow our lead toward this trip of acceptance we’re on or have made.

Yet, how can we do that? They might have no desire to change—they may never have the desire to come to the ‘same’ understanding. Even if they did, it would be a different understanding to ours.

All we can do is come around to the truth: we can control no one but ourselves.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.