The chasms that keep us from understanding – Sunday, August 30, 1959
These recent weeks we have considered happiness and. ignorance and understanding: the need for understanding facts and places, and people—perhaps especially people, for we so much need an understanding of each other, at home, at school, at work, in marriage, and in every relationship of life.
Shakespeare, in Love’s Labour’s Lost, had one of his characters make this remark: “Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not,”1
One of the barriers to understanding is lack of communication, lack of talking things out, lack of keeping things in the open.
One of the barriers to happiness and trust and confidence in marriage is this very matter. Even the most promising marriage, the most promising relationship of life, can run into trouble if either party to the partnership will sit in brooding silence, will nurture and closely hug his grievances to his heart, and not be frank and honest and open.
Pressures build up when there isn’t any outlet. Small things become magnified, and much more than is true may be imagined. And so, homes and. hearts are needlessly broken, and sacred covenants sometimes severed. No two people ever see all things precisely the same. Often two people even closely associated fail to have the same sense of humor.
What seems funny to one may seem pointless to another. What was meant for a harmless, good-humored remark by one person, may, to another, seem to have a sharp or sarcastic edge on it—or a meaning which honestly may not have been meant.
And so, there is much of misunderstanding, much of not knowing, of not talking, of not getting through, of not seeing inside; much of hurt, much of heartache, much of mistrust, much of unhappiness, much of sitting in hurt silence.
Any two people, or any number of people, who are not understanding, not congenial, not getting through to those with whom they should keep closer, should open up, communicate, take off the tenseness, the quickness to take offense, and talk and face facts, not in self-justification, and not in accusation, but in frank and honest fairness without any edge on it—and not sit and brood in silence. Happiness cannot survive in pent-up places. It flourishes out in the open.
And among friends and families, neighbors and fellow workers, and among those married, we must talk; we must get through, we must somehow cross the chasms that keep us from understanding each other.
1 William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act iv, se. 2
August 30, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,567