After a fight:

Understanding is like weather

Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash

Both of us said things we didn’t mean, and the fight ballooned. We parked in the garage; I said I needed some time; he went inside. In retrospect, both of us felt the same thing—the offness of a meeting we just had for our daughter—but reacted differently. We came out hot with accusations. I asked for space not because I wanted it but because of an old drumbeat in my head I’ve worked to quiet, and still it returns sometimes in hard moments, loud as ever: You don’t understand me.

I’ve spent my life stalking understanding like a cat on a mouse. When I was young, this helped motivate me in school. It’s what keeps me rewriting briefs and manuscripts until I believe someone could read it and know. And I crave it even more on an emotional level, in friendship, in family, in love. When I feel it slip, the hurt is so big I pull away, which is a vicious cycle.

Pages of journaling later, I came to this: Understanding is like the weather. The way sun comes and goes on the lawn, faint and then bright and then not there at all. Our songs and stories about soulmates and lifelong friendship and feeling complete make us think of understanding as a steady state, or at least an upward progression. But these songs and stories are about moments of sun.

Maybe the weather is around to remind us of all the parts of life that were never meant to be constant. I’ve always loved that even meteorologists with the best technology often get it wrong. Oh how wonderful a sunny day feels though. Getting you, you getting me, getting you getting me, feels so clear and good that I mourn when that feeling goes.

Maybe on some spiritual level understanding can be perfect. Maybe Tibetan monks live there. Maybe we can find more of it within ourselves. But expecting it to come and remain constant with another person? That’s not the way this life on Earth is meant to go.

So what if we change our expectations? What if we find awe in every fleeting patch of sun, and trust that it will come back around? “Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,” Walt Whitman wrote. “Missing me one place search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.” We found some pause, David and I, and came back around.

Before we did, though, I traveled for work still in my lonely-planet state. Heading from security down to the airport tram, I put on a sad song, stuffed my phone in my pocket, and glanced up while descending a long escalator. Two strangers were smiling and waving down and holding big pieces of poster board. Farewells to loved ones, I expected, but no: the signs said, “Have a nice flight.” Their waves were to everyone. Passing sun.