Long post GO!
I used to think like that. I used to think "Will I ever find somebody who truly understands me?" I have met some people during my life that had that potential. But in the end it turned out they never truly understood me. All I wanted was to be understood. We had a great deal of overlapping interests and we were best friends for a while (at least from my point of view). But things changed. I don't know about the other person, but I do know that I evolved further and met new people.
I have many different friends to cover all of my areas of interest. I am aware that I cannot find a person with a very great deal of overlapping interests. But you know what? It's fine. I accepted that fact. You could say that I have one person for each area of interest. Actually I am not a person who is supposed to be understood. I am the one who understands others. During the past few years I have somehow developed an exceptionally strong skill of reading people right away. I can usually guess what a person is like just by looking at them. If I hear them talk, I simply know what they are like. Sure, I don't know anything about them. I don't know what their favorite food is, I don't know where they went to school, I don't know if they have siblings. But I do know their personality. I understand their personality. I have gone through a great deal of stuff in my so-far short life and I have been in many different states of mind. I have seen so much that I can understand the other person without problems, because I have been there, even if it lasted just minutes.
This skill offers me another privilege. It's the privilege to choose. I am the highly compatible person, I can choose who I want in my life. I don't have to put up with people who are annoying and have a low character. In fact I don't even have to spend much time with them to figure out what they are like. I can tell just by looking and talking to them. There simply is something unconscious in people's voices that makes them reveal themselves to the world without intention. Body language and voice tone take 93% of the communication, so it makes sense (70% pure body language, 23% voice tone and para-verbal communication - the way somebody says something) while only 7% are the actual words. Tell me your name and shake my hand I have learned 14 times more about you than just your name.
You are not just unique, you are extraordinary. As I said earlier, a long time ago all I wanted was to be understood. I wanted to be normal, because I knew I wasn't just the average Joe. I was different. I wanted to be normal because I had suffered for not being normal. A few years ago I accepted the fact that I am not normal, that I am not average and that I never will be. During the time where I accepted that, I started embracing it as well. I didn't want to be normal anymore. I have found joy and happiness in who I am. I am not just different than others, I am better. It was hard to accept that, because at the time it seemed like arrogance. But this isn't arrogance. It's confidence. Arrogance is when you have to cover shortcomings with insecurity. Usually it manifests itself by bragging and telling other people how great you are (even though you're not). Why should I tell people that I have realized that I am better than them (most of them, probably not all)? Why should I? They wouldn't understand it anyway. And I don't need them to understand. This is my knowledge and my experience. This is me. When I act with confidence, there will always be people who interpret it as arrogance. I cannot change that and I don't even want to change that. Let them suffer if they are unable to interpret my actions and then talk shit behind my back. They don't deserve to have me around, they don't deserve the privilege to understand me or a chance to understand me. I could have given them so much, but they choose to dislike me for being better than them instead of trying to become better themselves. I finally understand why they say that "the path of evil" is easier than "the path of good". It's simply easier to blame somebody else than correct the problem within yourself. I am not perfect. At least I always try to evaluate somebody else's point of view against mine. And sometimes I am simply wrong. Sometimes I simply did do something that was inappropriate. Sometimes I did do something that was mean. And if I didn't have those people around me that I call friends, I might never have found out. They aren't just benefiting from my company, I also benefit from their feedback. I help them become better people and they return the favor so I can become even a better person.
I'm not saying that I am a 100% balanced person or that I am balanced in everything, but while interacting with so many people I have realized that everybody simply has a different opinion about me. I am pretty much in between of all of them. I am in balance between all of them. Even though most of them know I am a decent man, everybody of them sees me with different eyes. I have a friend who thinks I'm a womanizer. Another ex-friend always thought of me as a bad-boy. Another friend is totally convinced that I am a geek (geek in denial in this case xD). Yet another friend thinks that I am a very good and helpful person, a saint, an angel, call it whatever you like. I realized that I don't fit into any of these categories. I am partly in all of them, but I am also in the opposite category. The spectrum of my personality is so broad and my range of interests is so diverse that I am a bit of everything. I understand all of them, because their opinion of me is a reflection of themselves. They see only the part of me that they understand, the part that is like themselves.
Selfishness is not a bad thing! Selfishness is only a bad thing if you disregard others' freedom or make them suffer through your selfishness. Being selfish means that you work on yourself, that you work to improve yourself, to evolve further. I don't have to step on others to succeed. I know that when I succeed, I can help others to succeed. If I selfishly gain a lot of knowledge, I can share it. If I am selfish and work hard on myself to improve and become a better person, everybody around me will benefit from it. They will enjoy my company, they will enjoy hanging around with my and interacting with me. They will see all of my personality traits and they will want to be like me. They will see the part that they can identify with and they will see all the amazing other parts. They will not understand me, but they will want to be like me. It's ironic, because there is not much to understand. I have simply embraced who I really am, what I really want and simply started improving myself. Just like the first step to solving a problem is admitting and accepting that one has a problem, you first have to accept yourself as you are before you can become a better person.
It's ironic, but ever since I became so brutally honest to myself, I feel that nobody can hurt me anymore. When somebody calls me a name or whatever, when somebody insults me, I don't care. I have accepted the facts about myself that are true, even the nasty ones. I have bombarded myself already with brutal facts and I have survived it. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And now I am supposed not to be able to take an insult like this which probably isn't even true? From somebody else who doesn't even know me as well as I know myself? That insult just goes through me, it cannot hurt me.
You know what is also ironic? There are loads of people like me. I'd say that I am one in a thousand. During my 5 years in college I have met only a few people that are like me. I'm not talking about people that understand me, I am talking about people that have probably had the same realizations as me, people that are great as me or even greater. About 700 new students get into my college every year. That means that I have probably had the chance to meet any of about 7000 people. I can say that 7 of them are great and that I have met only 2 or 3 and that I might be one of them.
Now, finding a woman that is one in a thousand? Believe me, it's easy. In average I meet a great girl every 6 months (maybe a year) without trying. If I tried hard, I could probably meet a new one every month, maybe even every week. I'm talking about a really great woman here, one in a thousand. A woman that is confident, that knows what she wants, that is yet feminine and that isn't a weirdo or emotionally unstable. One that isn't needy or has any shortcomings that she has to take out on you to compensate for them. It is one in a thousand. You just have to truly realize what you want. I used to have too high standards myself. Now I have just high standards, but it doesn't mean anymore that they cannot be met.
People aren't actually bad. Everybody is just trying to find their way. Sadly, some have lost their way and now they live to make others suffer because of it.
I was sad once, a long time ago. But after I have accepted who I am, what I want and human nature in general, I can see the matrix.
From what I realized, the purpose of life is survival and reproduction. And that's fine with me. I can still choose whether I want to follow that purpose. I have a choice. Just because that's the purpose of life, it doesn't mean that I can't enjoy other things as well. It's just that nature has programmed me (and every living being in the whole universe probably for that matter) to feel something called happiness if I progress towards survival and reproduction. So why not be happy? Having others understand me obviously doesn't bring me happiness, at least not remotely as much as other things do such as knowing who I am and what I want. I want to live life, enjoy life and have sex. There is nothing wrong with that, it's the most natural thing to do.
God, I'm so full of shit. ._.
EDIT: Look at your man. Now back to me.
EDIT: Something else. Once you have removed the need to be understood and the need to actually have shared interests (or simply accept that they will never overlap that much), you have been freed from society's programming that two people have to have common interests in order to be together. It's not about interests, it's about creating a connection. I can create a connection with a girl by telling her my emotional state when eating straciatella yoghurt. She will relate to the emotion, not the actual event and the connection is created. Example:
Quote*somewhat excited* I totally got addicted to straciatella yoghurt. You probably know it, it's brand X from the company Y. I just love when I put the spoon in my mouth. The taste feels like a cool sweet breeze on my tongue. It just melts away in my mouth. Aaaah, it feels so good. And when it slides down my throat I can't wait for the next spoon full of this creamy magic. *normal again* You can imagine how sad I feel when the cup is empty. *passionately* I just want another one! I want to devour it!
I realized this feat because I was observing myself. Every time somebody was talking about something personal, I was trying to relate to the emotion they felt, never to the actual event. I realized that people recreate the event in their head and then relate to the emotion that the event would cause. That's why telling somebody, who hates their parents, that you lost your own parents will not really cause as much connection as telling them that you suffered a lot and felt like crap because you lost your parents (notice how it somewhat becomes secondary). They will relate to the emotion you felt and they will "understand" you. In order to be understood, you simply have to let them relate to your emotions because we all feel the same emotions.
Sometimes talking like this does other things to her as well, but this isn't the right place to talk about this. ._.