Seeking to Understand
If you really scrutinize it, life is simply a series of changes with the goal of all humankind to understand the reasoning behind it. In order for us to predict what will happen in the future, we strive to explain what we have already experienced. We take things apart to see how they work. We speak with people to hear their points of view. When something extraordinary occurs people will crowd around so they can see and understand for themselves.
The hard sciences, physics, chemistry, biology are all directed toward determining what is happening and explaining why it happened. What are atoms made up of? What happens when you light a candle? And why do humans have only two arms instead of sixteen? Throughout human history, we dug deeper and deeper into our known universe, and shared our revelations with future generations. Through this process, our universe expanded. Humans became comfortable with situations which were previously out of their control. We found ways to breathe underwater and determined which plants were, in fact, edible. These actions allowed our species to survive.
Intangible items, such as religion, seek the same objective. Not only do we seek to address our physical environment, but we also seek to explain the spiritual world, or the world beyond what we can currently describe. When our ancestors saw lightning, they described it as an event from the heavens because we lacked the capacity to explain the physical phenomenon. When a loved one dies, we describe it as the wish of a higher power, because we simply cannot explain the loss of one individual versus another, or the event taking place at that point in time. We seek understanding and enlightenment through religious ceremonies, hoping that those areas incapable of description can be simplified for us mere mortals.
Our quest for knowledge continues on a daily basis. We check the news to understand events happening around the world. We ask colleagues how their weekend was so we can relate to their sleepless nights with a new child. If humans lack the information necessary to describe something, we search for it online or ask a parent. Your involvement in new activities must be shared with others so they too, can understand what it was like to jump out of an airplane. And when others do not live their lives the way we expect, we convince others not to take this same approach, lest they also suffer the same fate and ill will.
So when you get upset by something, ask yourself about the motivations of others involved. Were they simply trying to understand, or to share information they felt was helpful? Or were they attempting to improve the human condition through their own view of how the world works?
Seek to understand, then to be understood.