my understanding of understanding

 good evening readers,

this post might be a bit philosophical as we are gonna dive into the importance of understanding yourself before trying to understand others. 

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a major part of life is understanding. we understand concepts, math problems, art techniques, colour combinaisons, even how to style and dress correctly. we understand what we study and we understand how to succeed in life ( or at least try to) 

understanding is fundamental for building yourself as well

what i mean is that, in order to understand the functions of life, you need to understand who you are. but in order to understand who you are, you need to go through life without having its full understanding. 

which makes everything much harder

experiences, in that sense, shapes us. they create another version of ourselves, create feelings and emotions that we do not fully understand 

once you know yourself, you then know your boundaries, you know how to process your emotions and how to deal with them.

and this is critical for forming friendships, relationships, whatever it may be. 

to make it make more sense, let's look at one situation that happened to me a few months ago, how it helped me grow and gain a better understanding of myself.

i had a guy friend all throughout my second year of uni, he was by my side the entire time. i was used to seeing him every week and texting him basically every day. but it took a turn where i would get sick to my stomach when i would go to see him and i did not understand why, was it because i had a crush on him or was it because i was too locked in on our friendship that i was so scared of doing anything wrong that would push him away. 

and unfortunately it happened to be the second option. i had become too emotinally attached to that friendship, to the point where it had become unhealthy. he was my first guy friend that i ever had, so i genuienly did not know what to do or how to deal with it. i was trying to understand how he felt, what he needed, what he wanted, before trying to understand myself and what i was feeling. 

today, our friendship isnt really present, not only because i thought i had a crush on him, but because i had not figured out what i was feeling or what i needed from the friendship. i was too focused on him that i forgot myself

and this is all due to a lack of understanding of my own feelings and what i wanted out of our friendship.

so my friends, i guess what i'm trying to say is that before you spend all your energy on understanding others, take a moment and ask yourself what you would ask them. and i promise you that its not selfish to understand yourself. sometimes this is really what you need for a good friendship/relationship to work

(*if you did not understand the earlier meme, it is for the quote "i think therefor i am" by René Descartes, who is the father of modern philosophy, he is quite an interesting guy) 

(** ngl i'm also making big conclusions out of this, experiences may be different but this is my reflection on what happened to me and how to deal with it lowkey) 

sorry guys that was long but toodles xxxx