Understanding

Yesterday evening I had dinner with a friend, a nephew-by-habit as he put it, and his girlfriend. This pretty young woman was quite talkative and a great deal of her conversation was either asking what appeared to be random questions or trying to solve another friend's emotional problems.

This morning it came to me, as it often does when someone tries to figure out someone else's thinking (and this can include myself) that it is generally a useless exercise. We can never truly understand what another thinks. We are each unique, in the sense that we are individual and unique collections of experience. We may have similar but never identical experiences. It is a well known fact that when a number of individuals experience the same event, each has a unique story to tell afterwards. Even the facts of the event vary from individual to individual. So how in the world can I perfectly understand someone else's reaction to a family squabble or a boyfriend's criticism or 9-11.

Even beyond this understanding, is how the individual mind works. There is all the emotional baggage we bring to our interpretation, though some will never admit that they have any emotional baggage to carry. But let's simplify things instead and look at something simple to illustrate what I mean.

For instance, a mechanical engineer comprehends the workings of an engine, an electrical engineer understands the workings of a semiconductor and a civil engineer designs a bridge that won't collapse. Neurologists try to comprehend the workings of the brain and are still baffled. They may eventually break the code. Who knows! I'm a writer and an artist. I suppose that if I took the time I might understand what each of these engineers or the scientist does, but life is short and I have many other things to do. Besides, we all know now that we favor the left or the right sides of our brains and my mind doesn't work like any of theirs.

Now, look at the physicist. Here they thought they had the smallest object possible and they named it an atom after the Greek word atomos meaning indivisible. Then they broke the atom apart to find electrons, neutrons and protons. So much for the idea of the smallest object. A little more accelerating and fine tuning instruments and voila - the neutrons and protons ended up being hadrons which were composites of even smaller particles called quarks. Imagine the physicist's surprise!

So the search for understanding goes on. And on. And on.

Before I stop, I must return to where I started. I know I've tried to understand others just like my friend's girlfriend with her many questions. I have tried to break apart the psychological web of others myself, before I understood just how convoluted my own psychological web had become. If I'm honest with myself, I did it because I thought I could help fix others, when I needed fixing. I'm not saying that I or anyone else shouldn't try to help others, it's just that I need to be mindful of just what kind of help I'm giving and what it my motivation. I've learned that there is much I do not understand and may never understand. Maybe, it's best if I mind my own business and let the rest take care of itself.