Power of understanding

A friend recently sent me this thought:

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need more fertilizer, or more water or less sun. You never blame the lettuce.

Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.

If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love and the situation will change.

Imagine taking the sentiment so well expressed by Thich Nhat Hahn (a Vietnamese-born Buddhist monk, in his book Peace in Every Step) and added employee to friends and family.

The solution suggested by Thich Nhat Hahn—understanding as catalyst to change—may strike you as too passive. But bear in mind that understanding has more power to change a situation than persuasion, reason and argument. Those are outward-focused efforts—where you are fixed in one place and then try to inflict change on another by convincing them to see the world as you do (blaming and preaching to the lettuce).

When you understand (what the lettuce needs), you likely will adapt your behavior (watering, fertilizing, moving the lettuce).

Thus, understanding is more powerful than persuading–or threatening or incenting–because when you understand, you change and that affects the system, effecting the larger change. With growth all around.

"If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love and the situation will change."