Being understood or Being accepted

On the back of so many conflicts and misunderstandings with my peers, I always felt like the issue was miscommunication. I thought to myself that maybe I am not expressing myself in the right way, maybe my communication isn’t the best and so this person isn’t able to understand me. I tried my best to communicate my ideas with much more clarity every time, whether they were political views or my opinions on how I think things should be done in a project. Unfortunately, every attempt led to just more debate, and inevitably an argument ensued. With time I have come to understand that it isn’t a problem of miscommunication, the other person understands me and what I am saying but they prefer to be at odds with me.

For one reason or the other, they chose to take an opposing stand to what I was saying despite it making sense to them. I ignored this but it was pretty obvious when they didn’t even take the time to listen to me fully that they had already cut me off to expose their viewpoints. I guess at a certain level I was looking for validation for my ideas but this person wasn’t willing to let go of their ideas in favor of one which wasn’t from them. I recall countless arguments I’ve had with different persons, whether it's my siblings, friends, colleagues, etc they often devolved into arguments because none of us was willing to embrace the ideas of the other person.

From my point of view, I couldn’t bring myself to accept ideas I knew where obviously wrong, yet again it was also my ego preventing me from even considering that the idea of the other person had more merits than mine. Looking back at those circumstances I can now say I was right and wrong at the same time, blaming the other person for the exact same thing I was doing.

Beyond all this, a very important question arises, do you care more about being understood or being accepted? I ask this because very often our ideas are going to put us at odds with each other and since I want to believe we can humbly disagree, very often that's not the case. These arguments are bitter and they make us look at the other person like an idiot who believes in crazy things.

One very good example of how this applies is the circle of someone like Elon Musk, do you imagine what it should be like for those who work with him? He comes up with these ideas which really sound crazy and impossible to do, imagine hearing them for the first time. We are going to mars, you’ll have Internet from anywhere on the planet, robots all around doing chores, driverless cars, power the whole planet with solar energy.

I think the average person with a little bit of logic will hear all this and call it crazy talk, till he sees it implemented and fully functional. Yet while hearing these ideas come out of his mouth anyone will be quick to disagree and label him as crazy. I don’t think the problem here is that he didn’t communicate well, it’s just that some ideas are so much different from what we know that we end up categorizing the person so baldly, ultimately there is no way of understanding such a person.

I’ve given up on trying to be understood at all costs, I’ll not make a generalization for everyone in the world but at least for the people in my circle, I’ve decided to focus much more on being accepted than being understood. I’ve just grown tired of these long conflicts and misunderstandings which sow only division among us. Not everyone will understand our opinions, worldviews, or biases, we all live very different lives, and our experiences differ as does the way we approach situations and comprehend them.

Striving at all costs to be understood just leads us down a path of no return where we only value those who agree with us.

I think being accepted has much more value, we may not agree with the opinions of others, and we might not even think they are right but choosing a position that allows for the ideas of others to flourish as long as they aren’t disruptive is of greater importance and merit. That’s why I’ve decided to focus on being accepted not rejecting everybody with whom I don’t agree.

Thanks for reading ☺️