"But Alexandra," he said wistfully, "I've never been any real help to you, beyond sometimes trying to keep the boys in good humor." Alexandra smiled and shook her head. "Oh it's not that. Nothing like that. It's by understanding me, and the boys, and mother, that you've helped me. I expect that is the only way one... person ever can really help another."
I read the above a couple months ago in Willa Cather's O Pioneers! (trust me, the book is waaaaaay more interesting than it sounds) and it has stuck with me. I don't have any ready proofs (scriptural or secular) for why being understood seems like a basic need of humanity, but isn't it?
It seems to me, too, that this need, or at least the degree to which we feel this need, has dramatically increased in 21st century America. As our society becomes increasingly self-focused and expressive, the felt need to be understood has increased and the hurt and despair when we are not has multiplied.
It seems to me, though, that with so much desire to be understood, we are loosing our ability to understand. So often, it feels like we are all trying to out-shout each other in our attempts to express our thoughts and feelings. Maybe that is what I am trying to do with this blog. But where are the listeners? Where are those who don't desire to always express, but rather to hear others? How can anyone be understood if no one is listening?
It takes sacrifice to listen and understand. It means letting go of being understood yourself for the moment. But isn't that the only way one person can ever truly help another?
"So much information is available, locked up in the minds and hearts of each person in every city. It is there, if you will but ask... When you listen, you validate their experiences and thoughts."
~Hannah
I guess I wonder if this need is real or (to an extent, of course--never completely) educated, somewhat. That is, since when have we felt that we were complex creatures that should be understood? Why do we carry self-importance?
ReplyDeleteObviously, our culture now plays up to our egos in this regard. But just as obviously, this is something that extends further back than the 1960s (when I would argue it began an exponential takeover of our concepts of child-rearing and such). How back do you think it goes?
Interesting post; thanks for putting it up. Never read Willa Cather; was 'O Pioneer' inspired by the Whitman poem?
Haha, how -far- back, is what I meant to write. Curses on not being able to edit.
ReplyDeleteWe make ourselves a place apart
ReplyDeleteBehind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really finds us out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
-Robert Frost, "Revelation"
Although I don't think I would attribute that need to God, as Frost seems to. I suppose God is the only one exempt from the need to be understood, and also the only one who can fully understand. The one who knows the number of hairs on my head, and who during his time on earth "knew what was in the heart of man."
When we learn to serve each other by listening and understanding, do you think we are in some sense acting as the hands of Christ to others, same as we are when we care for the sick or the poor?
Peter - you make a very good point that I've been thinking about since you left your comment. This is sheer guess without any research to back it up what-so-ever, but it is my opinion that people probably have always felt a need to be understood, however that felt need was much simpler. It seems to me the need to understand oneself and then to be understood is as ancient as the need to understand the world one finds oneself in. But just as the ancients had more crude ways of understanding the outside world, they also had cruder ways of understanding themselves and therefore expressing themselves. But I do think we see abundant examples of self-expression throughout documented history. The poetry of the ages shows not only varying degrees of introspection, but also a desire to communicate what has been found inside to the outside world. And the fact these poems and odes and legends weren't ignored and forgotten by the worlds in which they were created makes me think people resonated with them to some degree and took them as their own.
ReplyDeleteWhat I DO think is unique to modern culture is the idea that anyone and everyone's expressions of what they find inside are equal. It seems in the ancient world, serious self-expression would have been taken up by the educated and/or religious classes. It is true that a farmer probably would not have sat around complaining that the butcher wasn't listening to his existential questions about life. BUT imagine that the butcher steals the farmer's cow. The farmer would want to be understood not only in a legal sense, but I imagine he would go to a local pub and hope someone might listen to his story while drowning his sorrows with a couple of beers. It might be a simple story about cows, but the farmer talks to share what is inside him with those around him.
But these are sheer guesses. To truly answer this question, some serious research in the field of social history would have to be done.
Trey - I absolutely think so. And I actually, I venture to say we aren't actually helping the sick and poor until we are FIRST listening and understanding.
ReplyDeleteOh and I have no idea about the Whitman poem. O Pioneers was written after the poem, so I guess it's possible.
ReplyDelete