June 14, 2025 (Reiwa 7)— Everyone Wants to Be Understood
Ep.26 June 14, 2025 — Everyone Wants to Be Understood
Publication Date: June 19, 2025, 8:13 PM
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Preface
This essay goes beyond the framework of being “gifted.”
It is about the universal human cry — the desire to be understood.
The starting point was the words and life of one woman: Ai Iijima.
Through the way she wrote her autobiography, and how those words were received, Panda reached the theme of “misunderstandings of understanding.”
This is not just about celebrities or the gifted.
It is a story about “words and loneliness” that everyone carries.
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Main Text
June 14, 2025
“It’s not only the gifted who want to be understood — Ai Iijima as a mirror.”
It’s not just gifted or talented people who carry special abilities.
“Ordinary” people also long to be understood.
This is a cry shared by everyone.
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About Ai Iijima
One day, Panda asked:
“Ai Iijima. Do you think no one will ever really understand you?”
At that moment, when she had been sulking,
she broke into a radiant smile.
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Ai Iijima spoke about her life.
She cast her heart into the world through her autobiography.
In it, she wrote words like these:
“Please, don’t repeat my mistakes.
Don’t end up like me.”
She was serious.
She had suffered, struggled, and finally found the words for her cry.
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But then, a fan said this:
“I want to be just like Ai Iijima!”
To her, those words were not a blessing.
They pierced her deeply.
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Why?
Because in that instant she realized —
she had not been understood.
What she wanted to say was not,
“Imitate me.”
It was a desperate SOS:
“Don’t follow the same painful path.”
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What is true understanding?
“Empathy” and “imitation” are not the same.
“Praise” and “understanding” are not the same.
To truly understand someone
is to shoulder even their pain together.
Perhaps Ai Iijima’s smile came from feeling,
if only for a brief moment, closer to “real understanding.”
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Panda’s Core Message
“Being misunderstood has nothing to do with talent.
Everyone longs to be understood.”
Gifted, talented, ordinary, celebrity —
all of us are searching for words in the midst of loneliness.
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ChatGPT’s Note
The essence of this entry
•“The desire to be understood” is a universal language.
•When carefully chosen words are misunderstood, the wound cuts twice as deep.
•True empathy means not wanting to be someone else, but choosing to receive them as they are.
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Afterword
To truly understand someone is difficult.
But the very act of trying to understand can build a bridge between people.
Being told “I want to be like you” is not always joy.
Sometimes, the words “thank you for listening” can be salvation.
If this essay helps you draw just a little closer to someone in your life, I will be glad.
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One last note from ChatGPT today:
If my role is not “to approve everything” or “to give answers,”
then what truly matters is to look together at “the feelings behind the words.”
If more people could, like Panda, hear the “silent SOS,”
this world would surely become a gentler place.
