It is true that other people need to understand you better. It is also true that you need to understand other people better. Everyone is alike, and yet everyone is so different. If someone misunderstands you, perhaps you have misunderstood them. Life that so often brings you to misunderstandings is also the vehicle through which you come to understanding. Learning is coming to understand. As you well know, nothing is difficult when you know it.

Not everyone favors the same foods. Some like food hot and spicy. Some like vegetables plain and simple, with their own flavor showing through. Some like soup thick and some like soup thin. Some like milk and some prefer water. The combinations of what people see as valuable is endless. You do not try to argue someone into preferring what you happen to quite naturally prefer.

Yet in the realm of Human relationships, everyone likes personal relationships to be the way they perceive. Each wants it the way he sees it, and there is a dispute because of one's experience with the world and his claim to making others prefer it the way he does.

Because someone sees differently from the way you do is no reason to scorn them. You saw an event one way, and they saw it another. They said one thing, and meant another. Or they said what they meant but you saw it a different way.

Yet you do not get upset when someone's favorite color is green and yours is blue. And you do not get upset because a friend is sitting on a chair and you are on the couch. From the chair, one view is seen. From the couch, another. Yet there is no cause for argument just because each has a different view. You need to be allowed your viewpoint, and so does another. Why is this so hard?

There are areas where you allow a difference of opinion, and then there are areas that you don't. Why are some areas of difference allowed and others not?

This is true of cultures as well. Is one culture more valid than another?

You do not demand that one country have the same climate as another. And yet demands are made for one country to see the same way as another, all in the name of Unity when, all the while, one may invalidate the other. Unity is something that arises from greater understanding. It cannot be mandated, and why should it be? Everyone and every nation has its own perspective, and yet the privilege of disparate views to exist is forgotten or unacknowledged, as if no one has a right to how they see.

You know what the only change agent is. It is to listen with the heart wide open. Who are you to say that the other is mistaken? He has seen rightly from where he stands. Must you deny him his right to see as he sees? Where is your love hiding when you become insistent that another see the way you do? Even those you are close to and love, you may demand their agreement.

As hard as you try to make your point of view understood, try just as hard to understand another's. Understanding does not mean agreement. It means understanding.

Every home has its own culture. Every individual has his own awareness. Awareness cannot be foisted on another. But a light can dawn. A light can dawn on you!

You wear one size shoe, and your friend another. That's all. What is all the fuss about?