To be happy in relationships, understanding is the key
If you can find someone who can understand you, you are a happy person.
My translation of a 2007 speech “Pick your soulmate” delivered in Vietnamese by Zen Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
- “How come doesn’t you pick another person but me? Where does your choice stem from? The physical desire alone doesn’t suffice. There must have been something else.”
- A soulmate is who understands us. In life, if you can find someone who can understand you, you are a happy person. The most precious gift someone can offer to you is his or her ability to understand you.
- Regardless of your gender, if you can find a person able to listen to you, understand your struggles, your pains, your aspirations, that means you see in him or her an empathic soul.
Son, why did you choose that girl over pretty ladies?
In the United States, there is a good-looking, talented young man who graduated with distinction and landed a highly-paid job. He is the apple of pretty ladies’ eyes.
His mom got surprised seeing him stay close with a girl who isn’t the prettiest. She is shorter than he is with a slightly dark complexion. Why is she preferable to other girls? — his mother wondered.
“I can tell those ladies look so eye-pleasing,” his mother said when sitting next to him one day. “Why didn’t you choose one of them? Why did you pick this girl? She looks not only slightly dark but shorter than you do as well.”
His mom’s questions caught him off guard. He didn’t know how to respond.
Still after several days of self-reflection, he knew what made his choice. The girl he loves, whenever he talks, listens to him in an attentive and understanding fashion. He is a scientist, but he loves to create poems.
Whenever he reads his poems, she always listens to them attentively. More than that, she raises questions that show she understands what his poems mean.
Other ladies also listen to his poems but merely out of politeness. They listen to his poetic pieces because they are forced to listen to them. They don’t like his poetry at all.
Thus, what makes the girl stand out is her preference for poetry, her listening to his poems and her understanding of his poetic works. She becomes his soulmate.
A soulmate is who understands us. In your life, if you can find someone who can understand you, you are a happy person. The most precious gift someone can offer to you is his or her ability to understand you.
Many people never cross their lives with the one who can understand them. Regardless of your gender, if you can find a person able to listen to you, understand your struggles, your pains, your aspirations, you see in him or her an empathic soul.
Soulmates know each other and understand each other. What we are looking for in life is a soulmate, the one who understands us. What a blessing if we can cross our paths with such a soul!
A musician mandarin & a woodcutter
Once upon a time in China, a senior mandarin played guqin, a plucked, seven-stringed Chinese musical instrument, in an extraordinarily beautiful way. None of his peers understood his artistic talent and passion.
Whenever he wanted to play guqin, his close aides and he climbed a high mountain, looking for a gorgeous place. Then he unfolded a sitting mat, made a tea, burned aromatic incenses before starting to play his music.
He was on cloud nine. He had the feeling only streams, trees, mountains, forests, clouds, water could understand his passion for instrumental music.
One day, when he was playing his instrument, a string broke out of a sudden. He changed the broken string. The new string broke soon after he resumed his playing. He changed another one and it also damaged. Three strings in a total.
“Someone must have been secretly listening to my music,” he assumed. He stood up and said out loud: “If someone is listening to my music, please let me meet you.”
A woodcutter showed up. The woodcutter had listened to his music and felt all the beauty and talent of the guqin player. No wonder the strings kept breaking over and over.
The guqin-playing mandarin was Yu Boya while the woodcutter was named Zhong Ziqi. The two talked to each other in a surprisingly compatible way. Boya for the first time found a soulmate, who could understand his art.
Ziqi agreed to be Boya’s close friend, but chose not to join him back in the empire for work. Ziqi just wanted to continue being a woodcutter. Now and then, whenever he felt missing his friend, Boya made an appointment with Ziqi. The duo drank tea. Boya delighted being with his soulmate. Their friendship remains known until today.
I wrote a poem to praise the friendship between Boya and Ziqi when I was 18. In life, if we meet someone who understands our mind, listens to our heart, we are the luckiest.
Back to the young man in California, three days that followed, when seeing his mother again, he responded to her questions. “The other day you asked me why I love that girl. Do you know why? It is because she understands me. Thus, I don’t mind her complexion is darker, she is shorter; I choose to love her over pretty, tall and graceful ladies.”
It is extremely blessed if someone can understand us. If a son understands his dad, a student understands his teacher, then the dad and the teacher will be over the moon. We’re grateful to those who understand us. Thank you darling for understanding me. Thank you son for understanding me. Thank you dad for understanding me.
Practice can help us understand someone. To understand, we get to listen, we get to observe to understand. When you live with someone who can understand us, we are walking on air. It is because understanding is the foundation of compassionate love. If we can’t understand someone, we can’t love him or her.
A soulmate is a person with whom you have an immediate connection the moment you meet — a connection is so strong that you are drawn to them in a way you have never experienced before. Your soulmate understands and connects with you in every way and on every level, which brings a sense of peace, calmness and happiness when you are around them.
- Unknown Author
In a romantic love, we need to be carefully. We need just a few tests to figure out if the one we love understands us. If that person doesn’t understand us, despite how high his educational degree is, how handsome his job is, how luxurious his car is, how admirable his home is, how good-looking he is, if we tie the knot with him, we will suffer as much as a life-sentence prisoner does for the rest of our life. That love is much more like in a jail.
It’s easy to recognize someone who doesn’t understand you. It takes just a few minutes. Someone keeps interrupting you when you raise your voice, keeps preventing you from expressing yourself, keeps showing off his or her belongings, someone has inability to understand your hardships, your sufferings, someone fails to know how to listen when you speak.
Don’t let yourself get drawn into external things: beauty, social status, fame, cars, houses, cash, salaries, degrees. Don’t let these things blind you. Stay alert with your eyes open to recognize if that woman or that man can understand you. If he or she can understand you, they can love you. This truth is apparent. This is the Buddhism standard on love and happiness. The weak is often attracted by external trivialities.
Authored by Thich Nhat Hanh
Translated by Mai Ngoc Chau
Thank you for taking your time to read my post! I welcome your comments as always. To learn more about author Thich Nhat Hanh, please visit plumvillage.org. More about me, please visit maingocchau.net.
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