{5 minutes to read}  Tim and Sandy are both Japanese American. They have two boys ages 10 and 13. While Tim was born in the US, Sandy was born in Japan and emigrated to the US with her family as a young child.

Sandy is very insistent that her children go to Japanese school on Saturdays so they can learn the language and understand more of their culture.

Tim says that they speak Japanese at home and would rather they attend sports activities on those days so that they can better integrate into the American way of life. They have had many arguments and fights over these issues. Sandy accuses Tim of rejecting their own culture and Tim replies that he just wants the children to do sports in the hope that they become athletes and get scholarships for college.

It is often very challenging to listen to a person trying to convince us of their position and disagreeing with ours without being defensive, critical, or simply blocking out what they are saying. We fear that our own position will be weakened if we show understanding.

Therefore, we must make a distinction between understanding and agreeing, and recognize the fact that we can understand someone else’s viewpoint without necessarily accepting that what they say is the only truth.

In the midst of conflict, showing understanding to the person we disagree with is an important step forward. If both parties are willing to work together, two views can simultaneously exist without canceling each other out, while expanding the understanding of both parties.

In mediation, I explained to Tim and Sandy that it might be helpful if they each acknowledge and understand the other person’s point of view and intention. This does not mean that one of them has to give in to the other. With some difficulty, they agreed to make the effort.

This experience is often more complex emotionally than intellectually. Making the effort to step into someone else’s shoes and admit to them that you do in fact understand their view, may leave you feeling vulnerable. The act of understanding, and the acknowledgment of that understanding, may seem like giving up your own position — or leading the other to believe that even though you haven’t said it, you agree that they are right.

Worse still is the belief that our own view is the only true way to see things. “If they only made the effort to understand me, they would definitely see that I am right and they are wrong.”

The idea that understanding is not agreeing is a difficult one to wrap our heads around.

Holding two conflicting views simultaneously is not only intellectually challenging but emotionally difficult because we are conditioned to believe that in almost every conflict, there is only one right and one wrong. We need to feel inside of us that we can hold both realities and still be true to ourselves.

Each parent ended up recognizing that the other’s point had some validity to it and in doing this, released much of the tension between them. They were both now in a better place and able to come up with a solution they could live with:

Each child would take on one sport. Each parent would spend a couple of hours every other week teaching the children how to read and write in Japanese. They would also, whenever possible, involve the grandparents who could tell the children stories about their country of origin and its culture.

Opening oneself up and undertaking what seems to be from the outside simply a way of expanding an understanding of the situation takes courage. We should acknowledge, both to ourselves and to the other party, the difficulty of doing this.

This concept can be applicable to anyone who is in the midst of a conflict, with a spouse, a child, a friend, or a work colleague. It may not always be necessary for the parties to emotionally understand each other to reach an agreement, but it is important that, at the least, they make an effort to believe that their view is not the only right one. 

Jennifer Safian

Jennifer Safian

jennifer safian. divorce and family mediator
divorce and family mediation
upper east side of manhattan (nyc)
new york, ny
(917) 881 5206
jpsafian@gmail.com
Jennifer Safian

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