Do you think you don’t need to be understood by others?
We can start by talking about understanding. I am quite an understanding person, in the sense that I like to listen to other people and try to put myself in that person’s situation. On the other hand, I rarely demand understanding from others.
I consider that it is a healthy mindset, but it turns out that the more I try to know and understand myself. I discovered a need within myself, which was the need to be understood by others.
At first I tended to deny this need, especially by suggesting myself that “I don’t need other people to understand me, I only need to be understood by myself.” So far I haven’t found anything wrong with the suggestive narrative, but I don’t think it’s quite right.
Until finally I stopped denial, and admitted that I needed to be understood by others. I think that’s why there is something called communication, so we can say what we need to say and try to make other people understand us.
One of them is boundaries, which I think are very important to convey. Although not sure it will make other people understand and stay still, but surely it becomes a medium for selecting which people have good intentions in our lives, which ones do not.
Because people who really have good intentions, won’t have a problem with the boundaries or privacy that we have.
For example, a building. Each building usually has its own security system. Generally, there are several security officers guarding various corners, plus checking metal detectors, CCTV, checking visitor identities, and etc.
Of course, for people who don’t have bad intentions, that’s normal and not a problem for them. It’s different from people who don’t know what their intentions are, or even have bad intentions when they enter a building.
Well, we are the buildings! Without a security system that we call boundaries, there will be many people with unclear intentions, even people who have bad intentions, come into our lives. Like a building, you could say only abandoned buildings do not have a security system.
Back to understanding, these boundaries need to be conveyed. Either implicitly or explicitly, so that people understand how our system is. As a consequence, there will be people who don’t like the boundaries we have because it interferes their freedom over us. Especially, people who have bad intentions or enjoy playing around other people’s lives.
In the end, it’s not that we don’t need to be understood by others, but we don’t need to be understood by everyone. It’s true that we also can’t force others to understand us. We can only begin to understand ourselves, and find people with whom we can understand one another.
