Knowing It Isn't the Same as Seeing It

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For a long time, I wanted things to make sense.

Not just generally. I wanted them to make sense to me.

If someone did something I couldn’t understand, I would try to figure out why. What were they thinking? Why would they do that? What does this mean?

There was an underlying assumption beneath all of that:

There must be an explanation that makes sense.

And if I could find it, I could understand what happened.

But I think I was missing something obvious: I was looking at everything from my perspective.

People don’t necessarily see the same situation the way I do.

They have different experiences. Different fears. Different needs. Different priorities.

They care about different things.

• What looks like avoidance to one person might feel like protecting themselves to another.

• What feels like rejection might feel like giving someone space.

• What looks inconsistent might be someone trying to balance two things that matter to them at the same time.

That doesn’t mean any of those explanations are necessarily correct. It just means there can be more than one way to understand the exact same behavior.

And once I started looking at things that way, something changed.

I stopped expecting other people’s behavior to make sense according to my own way of thinking.

Why would it? They aren’t me.

Why I Wanted Things to Be Clear

I think this is also why I liked simple answers so much.

If something is right or wrong, I know where I stand. If someone is interested or uninterested, I know what it means. If someone cares or doesn’t care, I know how to interpret what they did.

The problem is that people aren’t usually that simple.

People communicate in all kinds of ways:

• Some people say exactly what they mean. Some don’t.

• Some talk about what’s bothering them. Some withdraw.

• Some know exactly why they’re doing something. Others don’t.

And usually, there is some reason behind it—fear, habit, experience, preference, or something they’re dealing with that I know nothing about. Sometimes they may not even understand their own reason.

That doesn’t make their behavior meaningless. It just means I may not be able to reduce it to one simple explanation.

Understanding Someone Doesn’t Mean Agreeing With Them

This is another thing I’ve had to learn.

Understanding someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them.

I can understand why something makes sense from their perspective and still think it is a terrible way to behave. I can understand why someone made a decision and still decide I don’t want to be around it. I can recognize that someone wasn’t trying to hurt me and still recognize that their behavior hurt me.

Those things can all be true at the same time.

I think I used to collapse them together. If I understood something, I felt like I had to accept it. If I disagreed with something, I felt like I had to decide that the other person was wrong.

But there is space between those two things.

• You can understand without agreeing.

• You can disagree without assuming someone had bad intentions.

Sometimes We Don’t Have Enough Information

And this doesn’t magically make everything easier.

Sometimes I’m tired. Sometimes I’m frustrated. Sometimes I’m anxious. The way I see another person isn’t separate from the state I’m in. Something that bothers me today might not bother me the same way tomorrow.

So there isn’t some perfect way to figure people out. I don’t think that’s the point anymore.

The point is being able to leave room for things I don’t know.

• Maybe I don’t know what someone was thinking.

• Maybe I don’t know why they acted the way they did.

• Maybe I don’t even have enough information to decide what happened.

And that’s okay.

What Actually Changed

I don’t think I became better at figuring people out. I became more comfortable with not knowing exactly.

And strangely, that has made it easier to understand people.

I can look at something and think:

“I don’t understand why you would do that.”

And instead of immediately deciding what it means, I can ask:

“What would have to be true for this to make sense from your perspective?”

Sometimes I still won’t know. Sometimes I’ll disagree. Sometimes I’ll decide that the behavior isn’t acceptable regardless of the reason.

But I don’t need the answer to be simple anymore.

There can be another person over there, looking at the exact same situation and seeing something completely different.

And for the first time, I think I’m actually okay with that.