understanding

What is understanding?
I found some definitions for this easy-to-pronounce-difficult-to-do word that I quote from some sources:
1. mental process of a person who comprehends
2. knowledge of or familiarity with a particular thing; skill in dealing with or handling something
3. a state of cooperative or mutually tolerant relations between people
4. an agreement regulating joint activity or settling differences, often informal or preliminary in character

Let's see the key words here: comprehend, dealing something, tolerant relations, and settling differences.
In many kind of relationship, among people, among countries, among civilization, the state of understanding is badly needed. Why?
Human being is created uniquely that nobody is the same as the others, even twins are not exactly the same.

Imagine if you and your boyfriend or girlfriend don't have understanding. I bet, you will fight every time about what to wear to a party, what to eat for lunch, and how many children you will have in the future. Well, it's such an extreme example. However, those little, day-to-day, thing can lead to an unnecessary conflict.
And what about big and complicated things, like foreign policy, trade deal, international cooperation, even peace process?

There have been a huge amount of ways built to make a better understanding among all those differences that potentially lead to conflict, or war at the worst. Interfaith dialogue, UN Alliance of Civilization, Search for Common Ground, and so on and so forth, you name it.
I attended one of the forum last month in Alexandria, a workshop for journalists from many countries, entitled Reporting Across Culture.

And yes, communication is best way to start understanding. Talk to other people about their mind, their feeling, their life, and share yours, is a very easy way to understand each other. After a bunch of communication, there will be understanding emerge from somewhere you've never expected before.

The most important thing is this is not the way to homogenized the world. This is absolutely not the way to ease differences, to deny them, or to avoid them. Instead, this is the best way to appreciate differences, to admit that the world consist of different things, and to be happy that we're not afraid of being different.