File:Mutual understanding.jpg

"Mutual understanding" , by Erik Pevernagie, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

With people who have the gift of being "special," we can develop a «mutual understanding."

There must be a collective ability to sympathize the feelings of each other. Those people must be out of the ordinary. They should be compatible and supposed to be fit for companionship and find enjoyment in works of art and entertainment.

"Mutual understanding" implies a bonded relationship.

Empathy, sympathy, affinity, harmony, and affection evaporate if no commitments or no responsibilities are assumed, no specific objectives set, no particular expectations met and shared values and interests not exchanged any longer. Mutual understanding may then, against all the odds, end up in heartache, confusion, and bewilderment.

"Understanding" may eventually become "misunderstanding."

In a relationship, people may be inhabited by discordant personalities. For that reason, it might be convenient for partners if one of both could sometimes be a little hard of hearing, or the other a bit shortsighted.

W. H. Auden has not a slightly pink view on any human bonds, when he says that "Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods."

Phenomenon: Mutual understanding

Factual starting point of the painting: two women on a line