“The struggle for understanding is one of the most characteristic features of our species; that is why man is called Homo sapiens. The satisfaction of this urge is our destiny.”

I crave the concept of understanding; much due to my discovery and resulted blindness of my conditionings and mechanisms of what I believed to be “right.” My biggest downfall, if-you-will, was that belief…

“…the biggest of all blocks to improvement: the certainty of being right.”

I could only get so far in understanding myself because of what I believed in, and even that was ever-changing and ever-confusing… but I was just struggling to understand through my closed-off belief system.

It’s a crazy thing, this “being right,” because the word purely exists on an individualized basis. Right and wrong really don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. However, “being truthful” holds a more universal understanding. I think we all damn-well know what it means to tell the truth, to be true to ourselves, and to be true to others, but do we always listen to or follow through with our truth? Is it possible that we may avoid our truth, our destiny, our path to universal understanding by replacing it with opinionated and personalized words such as right and wrong?

“Dislike of a word may merely stem from the inability to grasp the idea behind it.”

I’ll go further to say the dislike of a concept, a universal reality or truth, or of a self-responsibility may merely stem from the inability to grasp the idea behind it.

Let that sit a little…

A great step towards understanding is to figure out what you do not understand, whether it is about yourself, another, a situation, an experience, or an outcome, because what you do understand may not be true. Try to remove your filters, your beliefs, your personal opinions, your personal judgements, your personal assumptions, your own definitions of right and wrong, and intimately question or observe through universal eyes. Be open, be sensitive, be patient, and be truthful.

All quotes via Hans Seyle’s “The Stress of Life”

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