Who Am I Talking to?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot.
I’ve been listening to when I say,
“You have to understand.”
I’ve been listening to when other people say that sentence too.
You have to understand. . . . No, you don’t.
Truth is, no one “has to” understand anything anyone says anytime anyplace at all.
Yet, even more amazing is that often when the sentence, “You have to understand,” is being said,
the listener does understand.
Often the listener understands
better than the speaker does.
I’ve been listening to when I say,
“You have to understand.”
Maybe the person I’m trying to convince is myself.
I fight the hardest to convince other folks what I need to believe most myself.
I wonder if I understand myself, will I quit telling other folks that they have to understand what I’m saying?
You have to understand. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.
Well, no you don’t. No one does.
We don’t have to understand each other . . . but it works better when we do.
Maybe we start by listening to and understanding ourselves.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Hi Liz
“You have to understand” versus “No, you have to explain better, so I do understand”
Many of us – me included big time! – ‘forget’ the steps it took us to understand that same item/idea/task we’re trying to explain. So-called: job-jargon.
During our blog-workshops me dear friend Lesley is fortunately always at hand to remind me of the tendency to ‘teach’ others wearing my ‘seven-miles boots’ 😉
Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
Hi Karin!
“Seven mile boots” is a great image for a disconnect that happens. We sure do like to endow others with information they don’t have any reason to be in possession of. 🙂
Yeap, so true.
(Must have something to do with my size 9.5 ;-))
Karin H.
Well, at least your feet stay on the floor. Mine often end up in my mouth. 🙂
LOL
Karin H.
Hi Liz,
I’m not sure if I understand what you’re trying to say, but …. (oops, pardon the pun! 🙂 people do use the you-don’t-understand to gain unfair advantage.
For instance, how about if I declare at the start of the conversation, “You will not understand.”
Or, “You’re in denial.” That’s unadulterated hijacking! You don’t stand a chance to disagree, or even argue. And sometimes the listener has to ‘prove’ that he/she understood.
A perfect state would be when two people ‘understand’ (not necessarily each other) in pin drop silence.
Liz,
I think you hit the nail squarely upon its head when you wrote, “Maybe the person I’m trying to convince is myself.”
When I utter those fateful words, it usually means that I want what I want when I want it which is NOW! I don’t want to hear the voice of reason…. so it’s easier to toss the turd bomb of “You don’t understand…” the unspoken rest of the sentence is… “because if you did, you’d agree with me.”
Those words are a signal that my mind is closed but my mouth isn’t.
UGH! Liz, how dare you make me THINK!
Kathy,
I love “a signal that my mind is closed but my mouth isn’t”! That’s exactly right, and we’re trying to convince ourselves that it’s okay to be that way, but deep down we know better.
Mike
That’s a great point, Zakman.
Some folks do use that sentence in that way. It does cut off conversation at the knees. Any attempt at getting to real understanding in that situation is met with a “See I told you so.”
If we could just begin by we’re going start at the core where we agree. 🙂
Hi Kathy!
“You don’t understand…†the unspoken rest of the sentence is… “because if you did, you’d agree with me.â€
My unspoken rest of the sentence “because I can’t even explain it to myself in a way that makes sense to me.”
Yeah, Mike,
“deep down we know better.”
but we’re trying to change what we know is the truth. 🙂
Maybe what we don’t understand is why we can’t change that truth. 🙂
Liz,
Yep. We want to change the truth, and we try by fashioning elaborate cloud cuckoo castles, er, “understandings” that try to eliminate the cognitive dissonance the truth is making in our brains, but trying to recreate those same artifacts in the brains of others doesn’t work nearly as well.
Mike
Hi Mike,
I just got this amazing image of me trying to put my hands inside your head to build a sand castle. 🙂
Yep I guess that sure won’t work. 🙂
A saw dust castle maybe! LOL
Come again? 😉
Sorry Mike, couldn’t resist
Karin H.
Hi Karin,
Take a look at this from William James. Our brains don’t like holding two conflicting opinions, so they go about fashioning “connections” and “filler” until the conflict is seemingly resolved. The challenge is that this collection of “stuff” is dependent upon the whole collection of opinions that was already there. When I try to convince you that my “stuff” is the truth, your brain (having a different set of existing opinions) activates the BS detector, thus elicting my “you don’t understand” response.
How’s that?
Mike
Whoa! Mike,
It’s looking suspiciously like you might have been down this road before a time or two. 🙂
Hi Mike
Kind of: who’s more stubborn then, not?
Karin H.
Yes, and in the comments section of this blog, too, if I recall. 😉
I’m with Karin. The part of that sentence that is missing is, “You don’t understand, so please let me try to explain it in terms you may understand.” It’s about putting the message into the receiver’s language rather than in the sender’s language.
I’ve seen this so many times. If only the ‘sender’ would repackage the message, the ‘receiver’ may be more amenable.
Oh Mike!
I’ve been found out!!! Curses!
I so agree, Glenda!
Though, it seems that sometimes we could care less about the listener . . . the argument seems to be between the speaker and the speaker. 🙂
If that is the case, Liz, why bother the listener? Why not talk to yourself? Or, if you’re looking for a sounding board, warn the listener.
Hi Glenda!
I guess the point is that we don’t realize it at the time. 🙂
And actually listen when someone else is talking
fv g
Hi FV Gazi!
Listening is something the world could use a whole lot more of. 🙂
Ok, considering you have a key component of Toronto shown in this post, I feel that I have to represent and drop my $0.02CDN (currently worth more than $0.02USD too! heheheh)..
I do believe that “You have to understand” has a place in the world we exist in. It’s used for those times where someone else has requested an opinion, some advice, or some other form of guidance – yet they’re not comprehending what it is they’re getting.
I personally reserve that bit for when it is imperative that someone actually does understand this point, because if they don’t, all time spent previous will be a waste, and all time spent in the near future will also be a waste. It becomes a waste simply due to the fact that they will have an understanding based on falsehoods they believed to be true…
“You have to understand that we are not able to do X until Y is complete.”
Sure, they don’t HAVE TO understand that, but if they don’t what will the result be?
The reality is that if you change the “You have to” to “Do you” does it not change the whole dynamic? 😉
Hi William!
Logic requires that we understand certain premises to get to the next point of logic. I couldn’t agree more.
Emotion on the other hand . . .
grin