a pause in the play

Love without understanding is blind, superficial. Love, real love, true love, requires knowledge, awareness—accepting another person as they are, imperfections and all. Blind love is admiration and infatuation, blind love is loving without knowing, and that's hardly loving at all. To be loved is to be understood, accepted, and appreciated.

One can be understood without being loved, but one cannot be loved without being understood. Being understood is a fundamental desire, a psychological need. Life is a play and we are full-time actors, playing a part every day, donning a mask and reciting lines written by authors unknown. Most of the time, interactions occur between characters, not between people. Being understood is letting one's guard down, embracing vulnerability, putting aside the actor's cloak for a moment and pausing the play.

We are each shouting into our own voids, desperately yearning for someone or something to respond, to validate our existence, to say that we mean something, that we matter. Being understood is a reply from the abyss, an affirmation of our own identity from the eyes of a caring observer. Being understood is comprehending the language of another person so that they don't need to translate their reality into something made for others. Being understood is being permitted to simply exist, to be one's self.