No One Has Ever Truly Understood You. And No One Ever Will.

[00:00:01]What if I told you that the deepest human desire  is not love, or it is not happiness or success, but to be understood? Think about it.  Why does criticism hurt so much? Why do people spend hours explaining themselves  after an argument? Why does the sentence "You do not understand me" may exist  in every language? You see, for me, this tells something far deeper. Humans do not  simply want communication. They want another mind to confirm that they are real. And that is  where one of humanity's greatest tragedies begin.

[00:00:46]You see, there is a question that I kept asking  many times. You know, even in initial stages, I used to wonder why is it that all  of us want to be understood. My mom wants to be understood. My brother wants  to be understood. My cousins, families, everyone wants to be understood. Even husband  and wife still struggling to be understood by each other. Why do human beings want to  be understood in the first place? Even me, initially, I wanted gods and goddesses  to appear and things like that, and in my eyes, those are all such unwanted  things. Most of spirituality is just stupidity.

[00:01:25]For a long time, you know, I believed it  was because understanding creates love, right? We all thought that. Then I thought  perhaps understanding creates connection.

[00:01:38]Then later I wondered whether understanding  simply makes life easier. But the more I observed people, the less convinced  I became on this. You see, for me, the desire to be understood has very little to  do with communication. It has everything to do with existence itself. I've seen people who  are praised by millions still complain that nobody truly understands them. And I've seen  children or my own age people surrounded by caring friends and caring family but believe  that nobody has known them exactly as they are.

[00:02:11]And also, I've seen lovers spend years  explaining themselves to one another only to come to a conclusion that they never really  understood each other. That is the strange part.

[00:02:24]If understanding were merely about exchanging  information, then a dictionary would be the happiest creature alive, right? Every  word would already have a definition.

[00:02:33]Every sentence would already have a meaning.  Yet human beings continue to suffer. Why?

[00:02:39]Because what they seek is not information.  They seek confirmation. That is the thing.

[00:02:45]They want another mind to look at them and say,  "You are real, and I understand you." That is a terrifying need. Because the moment my reality  depends upon another person's understanding, I have handed them the authority to decide  whether I exist as I believe I do. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? For me, that  is where the tragedy begins actually.

[00:03:07]Imagine a mirror. A mirror reflects whatever  stands before it. It does not judge. It does not misunderstand and things like that. It  simply reflects. Now imagine replacing that mirror with a human mind. Immediately the  reflection changes. Every person carries different memories, different set of  fears, and different expectations, and different wounds too. The same sentence  sounds comforting to one person and it might sound insulting to another. The same  quietness or silence feels peaceful to one and terrifying to another. I feel  so quiet at peace, and I sit quietly, but my mom and brother can't sit quietly for 10  minutes. They immediately want phone or they want something. So the same smile appears genuine to  some people and manipulative to someone else.

[00:03:55]So what exactly am I asking when I say, "Please  understand me"? What exactly are we all asking?

[00:04:01]I'm asking that another imperfect mind to  reproduce my private world perfectly. It is an impossible request. No two people have ever  lived the same life. No two nervous systems have stored the same memories. No two minds  have arranged the reality in identical waves.

[00:04:19]It is important to understand that you are the  self-aware reality which is the substratum of all.

[00:04:24]Not all these silly petty things of understanding,  drama, mind and spirituality, gurus, ashrams and things like that. You are like the king and  queen who has the entire kingdom by your side but beg for a few spirituality which is nothing  but coins that are fallen down on the roads of your kingdom. See that you are the origin of all  origins, and it is very easy. It only requires you to see the truth as it is, not decorated with  your false assumptions and things like that.

[00:04:54]Then why do we continue asking for complete  understanding? Because I think something inside us cannot tolerate being invisible.  You see, for me, invisibility is also one of the deepest human fears. Death is frightening, of  course, but loneliness is more painful than death.

[00:05:10]For many people, failure hurts. I understand.  But invisibility eats us like a parasite from within. You know, I've been in one organization,  and they, if the leader of the organization does not look at you, that fellow's life is miserable;  now the entire day is gone. That fellow spends his time thinking, "Why did he not look at me?  I have committed a sin, and something I have done," and things like that. So are you seeing?  We are okay to meet and chat with God of death, but we are not okay if people misunderstand  us or do not understand us. We feel like it is invisibility. So to be invisible means that my joy  exists only inside me. My suffering exists only inside me. My dream exists only inside me. So if  nobody truly sees them, they begin to feel unreal.

[00:06:02]So what do we do? We search for witnesses.  Not because reality changes and things like that, but because our confidence in reality  changes. That is why people constantly explain themselves. They explain why they were angry,  why they cried, why they left, why they stayed, why they follow certain guru or not this guru and  all the blah blah blah stuff, or why they chose one career instead of another, or why they love,  why they hate, why they failed. Every explanation carries the same thing: that please tell me that  I make sense. Right? We all want to make sense.

[00:06:38]The thing is that when someone misunderstands me  or you, for that matter, we rarely become angry because they received incorrect information.  We become angry because we feel arrested.

[00:06:51]It feels like as if the person has replaced our  story with another version. And suddenly we begin fighting not for the truth but for identity. This  happens everywhere: in families, in friendship, in marriages, and even on the internet. Even in  politics, everyone repeats the same sentences in different words. "That is not what I meant.  This is what I meant," and things like that. It is almost funny. Billions of people all speaking  different languages, carrying different labels, living different lives. Yet every one of  them keeps saying exactly the same thing: "You do not understand me." Perhaps this is the  most universal sentence humanity has ever spoken.

[00:07:32]For me, this tells something very deeper  and absurd. Human beings spend their lives inside a mind that nobody else can enter. Not  even for one second, not even for one moment.

[00:07:43]Not even the closest companion can directly  experience another person's thought. Everything must travel through imperfect syllables:  words, expressions, gestures, art, music, writing, and all the things. But symbols  are not experiences. If I describe fire, nobody feels heat. If I describe grief, nobody  loses the person I lost. If I describe fear, nobody's heart becomes mine. Right? Experience  never leaves the one experiencing it. Language merely circles around it. It never  captures it completely. That is why misunderstanding is not an accident. It  is the natural condition of being human.

[00:08:29]But are you human? No. You are the absolute,  unblemished, purely, ridiculously, absurdly the self-aware reality on which the entire  drama of life is existing. You are the origin of all origins. Yet what we do? We beg for silly,  petty human understandings and things like that.

[00:08:51]Communication is simply our continuous attempt to  reduce the distance between two isolated minds.

[00:08:59]The tragedy is that the distance never  disappears. You see, it is important to see who you truly are and not simply get  into all these detailings. Ultimately, I will conclude my speech by saying that follow  the message, not the messenger. I am doing all the social media just to make a living and for the joy  of speaking alone. You are the self-aware reality which is the substratum of all, whether you  like it or not or believe it or not. Thank you.