THE BIGGER PICTURE/Shalini Sinha: It is amazing how all the struggles of humanity distil down to one difficulty: "You don't understand me." This suggests that it might be possible to transform all the struggles of the world by learning how to meet this one need.
But, can it be true? Is it really possible that war and violence, hunger and poverty could be affected by thinking about this one struggle: being understood? It seems far too simplistic and, yet, holds in it something genuine when examined closely.
Immediately, hunger and poverty seem a little easier to understand. These instances involve innocent people who have been targeted and deprived of resources. They are victims of local, colonial or global policies that have not held human needs and social justice at their core.
As a result, many millions of people have been silenced, starved, and made to feel undeserving. After several generations, the struggle is internalised, and humans have begun to behave as though they were worthless. Society allows this to continue.
It is not a far leap, then, to realise that hungry and poor people might be left feeling feeling that no one recognises or values their needs, and how paying attention to their experiences and taking seriously their directions might make gains to eliminate the struggles. War, however, is more complicated.
When two parties are caught in a violent struggle, each one deepens their defences. Each side believes they are right. This righteousness seems strong enough to justify the killing of humans by humans. However, bullets are flying into bodies, life is being ended, and there is no way this could be right.
When we are so sure we're right that it's worth someone else's life, a separation takes place. Each side believes they know something the other doesn't or refuses to acknowledge. They feel misunderstood and driven to destruction. The struggle is unbearable: we must kill ourselves or kill another.
There is very little thinking operating in a situation of war. If, within this struggle, one also has access to material resources and structural power, violence becomes the means to suppress and control. You believe you know better and are doing the right thing, so you feel there is a good reason to close yourself off from gaining insight into the other's experiences or points of view.
If you lack structural power, violence becomes a tool to make people listen. It is an idea that arises in the absence of another solution. It becomes a means of drawing attention, when it feels you have no voice. Even in that place of hopelessness, one key issue remains central: "We need people to listen. Our struggle requires attention."
Still, society teaches us to resist providing such attention. "In the face of this behaviour, we will not talk with you. We won't listen. We won't understand." Your struggle is not valid. You do not matter. Because your actions (or re-actions) have become too horrific, too unacceptable, we deny you attention.
Violence should not be accommodated, but the struggle that drove a human being to take those actions must be healed if we are to eradicate it from our world. And so, we will have to take leadership. We will have to listen.
The situation of war is quite explicit, but the same struggle is repeated in all of our lives. We felt it as teenagers and hear it as parents: "You don't understand me." It is a plea, begging for our attention. Yet, most of us get angry they didn't ask in a nicer way.
The problem started much earlier than this. Much younger children hand us their struggles on a plate. They show us their hurts with no shame or embarrassment. But we get confused. We offer them neither insight nor hope. Instead, we say things like, "Ignore him. He's just looking for attention." As though looking for attention was the wrong thing to do.
No one says, "Yes! Looking for attention. Bravo!" Yes, he deserves attention. She needs attention. Give them attention - healthy attention to break this struggle down.
Indeed, we require it. It takes thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent attention to heal a hurt and create something new. When we are children we want to get through their struggles. As adults, we give up hope that we could change anything.
We make a mistake when we repeat the cycle: deny love at that moment when someone shows us exactly how deeply they hurt. We teach our children to stop believing in us. We blame them because they look like they're having a hard time.
We've built a world where discouragement is endemic, poverty and hunger have not been ended, and war seems the best idea we can come up with. A struggle for belief and attention.
There is something in the idea that the core struggle of the world comes down to one thing: "You don't understand me." The world would be quite different if we could come to understand.
- Shalini Sinha has founded Forward Movement, a clinic where she practises life coaching, the Bowen Technique, and is studying nutritional medicine.