How Understanding Our Differences Is Truly The Way To Love
Oftentimes, when people write about love, friendship, companionship, or any form of relationship, the word understanding and communication is never out of the picture.
They use those words so much that you can clearly get that it is the thread that binds all good relationships together, that holds good human interaction together - understanding and communication.
Beyond just UNDERSTANDING in general terms, understanding human differences and how it fosters healthy friendship or relationship is my focus in this article.
Across all the friendships I have had from birth till date, I can tell you that until we truly seek to understand our individual differences, we can never truly say we’ve loved. Until we understand that people are not exactly like us, do not behave the way we behave, work the way we work, love the things we love or love the way we love, we can never truly say we’ve loved them.
Yes, love supersedes all but we need to get that no one is an extension of our personalities and we need to love everybody uniquely, according to how they would like to be loved .
Until then, we will forever love others from how we want to be loved or how we’ve perceived love to be.
Understanding individual differences involves getting to know people for who they are. Learning about others without holding any bias in our minds. Learning about how the people we choose to love want to be loved. Learning about their personalities, how they relate, how they interact with the world, who they are when they are alone, how they love to work etc.
If you have a friend who isn’t an early riser or morning person and you choose to love that person, you should respect that person’s personality. If they do have anxiety with conversations, you should learn how they want to be interacted with.
I know you’re thinking about compromise, where the place of compromise stands in all this. It does and should exist. This is how sometimes we show others that we love them, when we can compromise for them or take just few steps from our comfort zone to meet them. So yes, I get the place of compromise.
Do we have a right to demand that the people we love compromises for us? No. I think if they love us right back, they should do that. If they don’t, it is your decision to keep loving or take the next big step away from their space.
Understand that people are different and meet them at their place of love. Changes would naturally occur but it isn’t in your place to push them to change. You would never get the best out of that.
Take the time to understand the people you want to love or be friends with for who they are, not who you would like them to be.
As long as you made up your mind to be with them in any form, get to understand them and love them for that.
This is why it is advisable to see and take people for who and what they are especially at the first phase of interaction. Make your decision to stay or say your goodbyes.Don’t try to change them to be who they are not to fit into the perfect picture you want.
If you want to be appreciated in a certain way, hold on to that. Hold on to your values. Hold on to your personalities. Hold on to your beliefs. Hold on to your principles. Hold on to who you truly are and I promise that the people that would love you, for who you are would come.
Just stop loving without understanding that people are different and it is their differences that makes them unique.
