Seek to Understand

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace;
that where there is hatred, I may bring love;
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that where there is error, I may bring truth;
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
that where there is despair, I may bring hope;
that where there are shadows, I may bring light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

— Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (anonymous origin, early 20th century)

In early recovery I desperately wanted to be understood. I wanted people to see my motives, my pain, my trauma, my “good reasons.” I wanted people to understand why I did what I did. In truth, I wanted justification disguised as understanding. I didn’t want to change nearly as much as I wanted people to change the way they looked at me.

When I arrived in the rooms, I recognized this prayer immediately. I grew up in a Catholic family, and from the moment I could read, I would silently recite these words that hung framed on the wall of my grandparents’ farmhouse. This piece has always felt deeply spiritual to me—transcending its religious roots into something like a basic blueprint for living.

The widely beloved text was not actually written by St. Francis of Assisi. It appeared anonymously in 1912 in a French Catholic magazine, and was only linked to him when a priest printed it on a holy card during World War I. Scholars note Francis would never have written something so focused on “I” and “me.” And yet the misattribution feels fitting: truth arriving through unexpected channels, stripped of ego. For me, it is the most perfect embodiment of the 12-Step way of life.

Francis of Assisi was born around 1181 into a wealthy Italian merchant family. After a spiritual crisis, he gave up everything—wealth, status, comfort—and founded an order based on radical poverty and humility. He begged for food, embraced lepers, preached peace during the Crusades, and spoke of animals and nature as his brothers and sisters. His entire life was a movement away from self and toward service.

What is the blueprint? The emphasis shifts from what I am receiving to what I can offer. Seek to understand rather than to be understood. This idea, in particular, has always stayed with me. It is the opposite of self-centeredness, which our literature reminds us is at the core of our problem. When I am obsessed with being understood, the focus is squarely on me—my story, my grievance, my need to be seen in a particular way.

Service begins with listening. Before I can console, comfort, or love, I must first be willing to understand. This means arriving without an agenda, without rehearsing my reply, without needing to be right. When I actively listen, I see another person as a whole human being rather than an obstacle or an audience.

Seeking to understand does not mean I agree or silence myself. It means I approach the situation with humility instead of ego. And the paradox is that when I stop insisting on being understood, I suffer less. My serenity is no longer hostage to whether someone “gets me.” I become free to show up for others from a place that is not transactional. This is the shift from self-centered fear to connection—and connection is the soil in which recovery grows.