“Excerpted from Please Understand Me II

Copyright © 1998  by David Keirsey

If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.

Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.

Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me.
That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offsping, your friend, or your colleague.

If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right — for me.

To put up with me is the first step to understanding me.

Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness.

And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences.  ”

People need to reach out their hand to hold another instead of slapping them away.People need to appreciate the full depth and breadth of the human experience instead of just one sliver.I have written of this before but it bears repeating,just because someone sees the darkness,does not mean they are enveloped by it.There is no positive without the negative and in between the darkness and the light there are a hundred shades of grey.

Every shade should be appreciated,if someones having a shitty,ranty,or dark day,even if you don’t agree or even understand,try to listen, try to see where they are coming from.You can say “Man,you know I don’t feel the way you do but I get it,it must be shitty” instead of ” There must be something seriously wrong with you” Looking at someone with an issue like they have three fricken heads,I’ve seen it,it’s not right.According to my own moral code anyway and it hurts me.It hurts when it’s done to me,it hurts when I see it done to those I care for.People preach how accepting they are, and ohhh lets all hold hands and snuggle,but when someones not acting the way they expect them to,they are left out of the snuggle when they just might need it the most.

4 Responses

  1. Couldn't agree with this post more Rach. And its sad because most people do this I think, the only person they know how to deal with is themself, and I think its easier for most to try to change others into a carbon copy of themselves so that they know how to deal with them instead of trying to understand the other person for who they are. I'm sure many would benefit from reading this passage.

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