Being Misunderstood

I read the words and conviction swelled in my heart. I heard a story from a friend in 2008, and allowed my perception of another person to be affected.

It turns out, the story was only partially true, and the part that wasn’t true completely changed the part that was.

I had spent 12 years misjudging someone.

I’ve shared a lot of stories. I don’t share as many these days. Partly because I’ve learned to curate them. Partly because, in the moment I want to share them, I don’t feel willing to offer my story at the altar of misunderstanding.

Being misunderstood is an inevitable reality of this life. Perhaps it’s a symptom of a fallen world, or maybe it’s just part of us all being slightly oriented in a different direction. We see the same story, but from a different angle, and draw a different conclusion.

Even when I believe I am communicating clearly, it’s possible to be misunderstood. How it is perceived isn’t only up to me, and isn’t only affected by me. In the same way that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, meaning is in the mind of the perceiver.

This propensity to misunderstand isn’t always the result of deliberate obtuseness. Or ill motive. It’s the result of different knowledge, feelings and experiences. Of viewing people through a simplistic lens. Of one small thing I know about them becoming the shade by which everything else is colored.

Trying to manage other people’s perceptions of me is exhausting and fruitless. It’s like setting a million eagles free and trying to control where they fly.

So, I’ve been intentionally allowing other people to misunderstand me. Remaining quiet when I feel tempted to clarify. Allowing myself to be unknown and unaffected by it.

The trick is to love anyway. It isn’t enough to hold my tongue. Remaining silent is not the objective, because it isn’t all about me.

During the time I would normally spend feeling unloved or trying to clarify, I spend intentionally seeing them as more than this one moment. Looking for things to love, trying to understand. Being curious about them.

Curiosity illuminates. Allows me to see complexity. Wholeness. To find compassion. To see people as God's children, instead of an enemy or competitor.

I’m not only misunderstood, I am also a misunderstander.

I can't control where the eagles I release go, but as an eagle I am in charge of where I fly. I don't want to waste another 12 years going in the wrong direction.