When understanding landed in my body

During a course in my master's degree in philosophy, I was assigned a text by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. I had to read about a theory called deconstruction and present it to my fellow students. There was just one problem: I found the text so complex and inaccessible that I understood almost nothing. And if I could not understand it myself, I certainly could not explain it to anyone else.

Then I came across a book in my library called The Ethics of Deconstruction. As I began reading, something clicked. I understood Derrida, but not through reasoning alone. It is difficult to put into words: somehow, I understood with my being rather than my thoughts.

Deconstruction is more about being in a certain way than understanding a philosophical argument. To grasp it, we need to experience ourselves in the world in a certain way.

We need to think of ourselves in relationship: with language, culture, history, earlier thoughts, inherited assumptions and everything that has shaped our understanding and existence up to that moment. We understand with our whole existence, rather than as detached minds receiving meaning from outside.

What made this moment extraordinary was that the experience itself was what Derrida's theory was about. Meaning does not arise in isolation and must, to some extent, vary with the person interpreting it. It emerges in time and space, through history, context and relationships that may already exist before we begin to think.

I gave the presentation and managed to explain the material to my fellow students. I received an excellent grade. But that was not the main thing.

What mattered was that this insight changed me permanently. It changed how I understand myself and the world. It was a complete shift.

Until then, I had assumed that meaning and understanding were things the mind acquired by mastering an argument: something universal that everyone would understand in the same way if they thought hard enough. I now think, no, I know, that this is mistaken. This experience showed me that sometimes the most important understanding lies in understanding our relationship with the world.

The moment was academic, bodily and personal at once. That is why it stays with me. I had learned something about Derrida and encountered myself in a new way.

Perhaps one of the first ideas that led to HomeBeing appeared in that moment, when I understood that I never think alone, and never have.