Understanding Is Highly Overrated

The addiction to understanding has driven me for most of my life.  It was my "salvation" of choice.  If I could just get it all figured out, then "my life would work and people would love and appreciate me."


It is a bankrupt strategy.  No matter how sublime my understanding, many people just don't give a shit, and rightly so.  They are far more interested in their own understanding.

Then too, understanding is nothing but a story about the unfolding of this unfathomable miracle called life, carried over from some past which is dead and gone.


No matter what my understanding suggests, reality is what it is; what happens is what happens. If my lover rejects me, I suppose there can be some comfort in knowing that she is still trying to resolve her issues with her alcoholic dad, and I'm a poor stand-in because I don't drink. But can I know that is the truth of it?  Humans are full of cover stories. Perhaps this is her cover story because the truth is, she just doesn't want me in her life.  Perhaps this is my cover story because I'd rather have another reason than she just doesn't want me.


I could spend a great deal of time, concocting the perfect story of why she left, or I could bypass the whole game by saying, she left because she left, and accept that.  Either way, she is gone.  I am here.  Life goes on.


I used to feel that I had to explain what happened and that this would allow me to accept it.  Now I see that I can often bypass the explanation and arrive at the same place, by simply accepting it.