Mutual Misunderstanding

This afternoon, I read a short article in which the author admitted that he didn't understand a certain group's point of view, even as he described how they clearly didn't understand his. Strangely enough, I found the article refreshing. It's true that we don't understand each other's points of view. How could we? We're not inside one another's heads, and we haven't had the same experiences. Even if we were to have the same experience, like looking at the same painting, we would probably experience it in different ways, such as noticing or focussing on different things in the painting or feeling different emotions about it. I don't think any two people have ever truly, completely understood one another's thoughts or feelings, unless one of those people were God or Jesus or the Holy Ghost. People constantly misunderstand each other, and it was nice to read an article written by someone who understood that.

In our daily interactions with people, there are going to be misunderstandings. We should expect it. We should never assume that we perfectly understand other people's perspectives because we are not those people. We haven't had the same experiences and we don't have the same personalities, so we can't have the same perspective that they have. We may not even be able to imagine what they might be thinking or feeling unless we know them well. We should try to understand that misunderstandings are inevitable, and we should try to be patient with others when we don't understand them or they don't understand us. In our dealings with others, mutual misunderstandings are, ironically, understandable.