Textbook vs Emotional Understanding: The Key to Real Growth

This is the mind map that organized my thoughts for this article.

When was the last time you thought you understood a person or issue but couldn’t connect on a deeper, more meaningful emotional level?

The framework of Textbook vs Emotional Understanding is a recurring theme in my conversations. Most of what we formally learn can be classified as “textbook understanding”, but the experiential part is lacking because we haven’t lived those events ourselves to know how it feels, which is “emotional understanding”. And in the most important things in life, it’s the emotional understanding that ultimately matters.

Getting Personal

If you’ve ever gone through a crisis and come across a book that speaks deeply to you in that moment, then you’ll know what I mean. It’s as if the author were speaking right at us, straight into our soul. The lessons flow so easily into us and becomes us. We are changed and grow profoundly as a result. That same book wouldn’t have had the same impact on you before you experienced those challenges - you would’ve only gained the textbook understanding, but not the emotional.

The same can be felt between romantic partners. One of my friends enjoys cycling so much that he’s constantly out there, at times at the cost of hanging out with his partner, which causes a lot of conflict between them. The thrill of the ride, especially shared with friends doing the same thing, reverts him back to a gleeful childlike state. However, his partner has never felt the visceral exhilaration of bombing down a mountain side, and nor does she have any inclination of doing so.

She knows that cycling is good for his mental health, whereas he knows that quality time is good for her. This is textbook understanding. However, the dissonance happens when there is little emotional understanding.

The Nature of Textbook vs Emotional Understanding

The core difference between these two types of understanding is thinking vs feeling.

When we textbook understand something, we may say or act a certain way because we think it’s the right thing to do, without always fully understanding why it’s important. This sort of understanding comes from books, class, news, parents, friends, celebrities and society at large. The advantage of textbook knowledge is that it’s highly scalable and can raise the awareness to a large group of people in a short span of time, especially in the digital age.

On the other hand, emotional understanding is experiential and personal. It’s what we feel is right or wrong, often based on direct experience and trial and error. It can also come from witnessing something happen to another person or told to us from someone we love or respect. Unlike textbook knowledge, emotions sink into us slowly, but can be accelerated when we are open and vulnerable - hence why crises are amazing opportunities for emotional understanding.

Emotional understanding is values-based and gives us a broad platform upon which to make a variety of real world decisions, whereas textbook understanding takes a case-by-case approach. Therefore, emotional understanding is much more efficient when it’s fully adopted.

The Broader Context of American Racism

Let’s zoom out a bit. After the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement erupted in the summer of 2020, the topic of systemic racism was on the forefront of American national attention for several months. The brutal footage of George Floyd’s killing was enough to stir the emotions of many and the awareness it roused was undoubtedly a step in the right direction. But whether this passion translates to lasting reforms depends on emotional understanding of the hardships that others face. This is where textbook understanding might actually get in the way of emotional understanding.

It’s one thing to hear about racism on the news or learn of it through history class, but unless we have experienced it ourselves (like getting pulled aside at the airport or racially targeted on the street), have friends who have (such as seeing a friend getting into a fight in San Diego over racial slurs) or read deeply into personal accounts, it’s very hard to emotionally understand.

A 2016 study on racial sympathy found that 20% of the 600 white Americans surveyed said they feel “a great deal” of sympathy toward blacks. For the remaining 80%, sympathy varied based on the circumstance. The study also found the most sympathetic people to strongly support a collection of broad measures to address inequality such as education, economic mobility and criminal justice. They also attended protests and volunteered in their communities even when race wasn’t on front page news.

The study (emphasis and parentheses mine):

“suggests that until more white Americans feel emotionally invested in less visibly outrageous forms of black disadvantage (healthcare, employment, housing aka systemic racism), their commitment may not extend far (beyond overt instances like police brutality).”

This means emotional understanding is deep AND broadly applicable while textbook understanding is circumstantial, based instead on isolated cause and effect.

Adding to this challenge is today’s PC (politically correct) culture where what you say or ask out of ignorance might be judged as racist regardless of intention. I’m not here to defend such people, but holding an intolerant attitude leaves no room for dialogue, squandering precious opportunities for empathetic education and connection.

Bridging the Textbook and the Emotional

There are three things that can bridge the gap between textbook and emotional understanding.

First is Exposure. I’ve observed that the most understanding, empathetic, and curious people I know have also lived the most diverse life experiences or have moved around geographically, living in different cities and countries. They have consistently ventured outside their comfort zone to seek out interactions with people who are different from them.

I’m not one of these rare individuals, but that hasn’t stopped me from learning from them. Since moving to San Francisco last year, I’ve put in the effort to build deeper friendships. Most conversations are centered around superficial activities or a brief historical account of the other’s past. But what I’m interested in are the point-in-time perspectives and how they felt during those critical growth junctions. The uncertainties, hopes, fears and internal workings meeting external changes. Knowing how they felt and dealt with their past gives me a much better idea of who they are today and allows me to emotionally understand what they look forward to in the future. The result has been a growing community of great people that I can have rewarding experiences with every time we meet, with each conversation building on the last one.

This is also why I try to bring city folks into nature. After all, how can we expect people to have a real stake in climate change if they fear the very thing we’re trying to protect? During the pandemic I realized that so many people were just stuck at home being miserable because everything was closed. Except that nature is always open, but most urban people in modernity do not have enough exposure to nature that it’s actually frightening to venture in and explore it. I’ve since made it one of my priorities to bring more city friends camping. I make things very comfortable, so that they have a great first time experience and learn to appreciate nature rather than shy from it.

On a broader scale, pushing ourselves beyond our sphere of existence makes us more empathetic towards people that we share this world with. In lieu of direct interaction is visiting institutions, watching films, and reading novels that bridge the gap. The Museum of African American History in Washington DC comes to mind. Visitors are moved through immersive exhibits together in tour groups across various stages of black American history from slavery to segregation to the modern era. Here are some recent accounts from TripAdvisor:

Should be required viewing: Honestly, I went for the architecture and was captivated by the stories. The heroic efforts of those who rose above the unbearable placement of life in America...astounding. The reality of what white Americans did to these people - gut wrenching. Critical learning here.

A handshake between Americans: This museum is not only made for the history fans of the US, this museum is not only for the generations who lived the racial conflicts in the country. It’s a wonderful and amazing place for all the folks, from grandparents to grandchildren, who want to spend hours learning, searching, finding, and being in the flesh of an African American in the hours of the segregation, from Martin Luther King, to Malcolm X, from Selma to Washington, here, with a magnificent architectural building.

Second is Patience. In our increasingly efficient, automated, and choice inundated world, patience is a rare trait. In the tech industry for instance, we make products that reduce “friction” in people’s lives so that we can become ever more productive. Yet we feel even more distracted, empty and exhausted because we are eroding the patience needed to connect with other people, especially those with divergent views.

Talking to others is a process that inherently involves friction. Friction is revisiting the same corner store and building rapport with the owner by asking how her day was. It’s listening carefully to your friend during a heated exchange, learning to ask clarifying questions rather than retort with arguments. Friction is acknowledging the calls of the less privileged on the street rather than walking faster away, perhaps even slowing down enough to buy a piece of fruit for him from the aforementioned corner store. Friction provides opportunities to move our relationships and communities forward in meaningful ways.

Friction also shows in cultural differences. I’m the son of Chinese immigrants who survived the Maoist era Cultural Revolution, where society flipped on its head under a regime of fear and prosecution, and the Great Famine, which killed ~30 million. Then upon moving to the US in the late 80’s with little money, family backing, or even English, they restarted from scratch and labored decades to provide the opportunities I enjoyed growing up. It’s hard to convey the burden of expectations and responsibility that I feel towards my parents to my white friends, simply because they’ve grown up under vastly different circumstances and therefore embody the American values of individual independence. Bridging this emotional gap takes effort, time and patience.

Third is Grace, which comes in the form of withholding judgment and forgiving actions done out of ignorance. Only by holding our own opinions at bay can we create enough room to understand the others’ intentions and see what shapes their worldviews. Only then can we begin to understand how they feel. Listen patiently first and judge after.

Krista Tippett, founder of the On Being Project, tied together these three themes eloquently during a 2019 talk at Google: “For these intimate civilizational questions of how we’re going to live together...it’s about knowing that we walk into discussion with deep, profound differences that are meaningful and important to us. The point is not agreeing. The point is getting into relationship, coming to know each other, and not letting those things we disagree define what is possible between us, opening up a new space, where perhaps what we have in common are our questions.”

This is the foundation of real societal progress, starting with the emotional understanding of the individual.

My Story

I did a 2-week wilderness course with the Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS) in 2019 where I was exposed to people vastly different from that of the typical Silicon Valley techie or college educated professional. In our little band of six was a high energy videographer who followed his heart over his head, an ecologist who no joke trained in Antarctica for space missions, and a Bay Area native (like me) who left the tech epicenter for the quiet Utah countryside to become our head survival instructor.

They all seemed content and fulfilled in their “alternative lifestyles”, much to my narrow minded surprise at the time. Our bonding over survival hardships gave me enough of a “crack in the door” to make me question whether I was truly happy living my own life. It was here that the seeds of genuine emotional understanding were sown. However, it would take another 2 years, a traumatic breakup, a global pandemic, tons of inner work and support from good friends for me to fully come into myself.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote that we must be patient with our deepest, most intimate questions. But if we’re to one day live into those answers, we need to be courageously open and intently listen to what life has to tell us. Developing emotional understanding of others is a key part of that.