to understand a person...

What exactly do we mean when it is expected to ‘understand’ a person? How easy or complicated is it? What does it comprise of? 

Understanding a person involves the following:

1.       Nature of his/her thought: In architecture, we are trained NOT to focus on the form (or base our judgement on the ‘form’ of the structure. Rather, the thought behind the form is supposed to be decoded). In the same way, one must ask oneself, what does a person in front of you constitute? What kind of ‘perception’ of life is he/she representing? Of course, perceptions are unique – equal to the number of people on earth. So how does your perception of life relate to his/her perception? How are you different or similar to him/her? What one will realize that the manner in which we understand the other person depends on our own perception! Thus, the aspect of “understanding” is relative to you – it depends on your perception! Thus, there is no absolute way of understanding a person! And perhaps that’s with everything in life! One can take any given phenomenon or a situation to analyse, one can get a million perspectives on it. Since the entire relation is relative, we should learn to accommodate a person’s notion about life. We change every moment, and so does the person. It is better to junk the idea of ‘permanence’ wherever possible. If thought can’t remain the same, what about life?

2.       A person’s thought contains a universe of feelings, emotions, intuition, rational behavior, weirdness, darker shades….everything. To visualize and realize this, is to confront the complexity of the mind.  Once we understand the structure of thought in him/her (and us also) we may choose to guide a structure in a particular way so as to sustain BOTH you and him/her.

3.       The structure of thought gives rise to a particular perception, or a strong emotion (happiness or sadness or pain). It is upto the individual what to make of this structure. And we may have limited success in altering it.

4.       There is therefore a reason, why we can’t understand a person completely. The separation between your mind and the person’s mind is required so that we become aware of our own perceptions and relative notions. This should eventually help us to break down mental barriers and reach a zone or a space which is uncontaminated by thought.

5.       Understanding a person, therefore, is to get a glimpse of this space within yourself and him/her. What binds us all together, what seems to give origin for everything else – is this ‘space’.