Running Up That Hill: The Impossible Wish to be Understood

There are some songs we hear.

And then there are songs we feel.

For me, Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) reaches all the feels. It is poetic, expressive and extremely thought provoking. It’s a song I’ve heard too many times to count, but sometimes a piece of music reaches us differently depending on where we are in our own lives. Words that once seemed simply beautiful can suddenly become deeply personal.

I first heard this song when I was a young teen, naïve to relationship complexities. The more I listened to the lyrics, the more I thought about something I’d wished for at different points in my own life:

What if, just for a moment, someone could experience the world exactly as I experienced it?

Kate Bush explained that the song was inspired by the idea of two people exchanging places so that they could understand one another from the other's perspective.

And that idea has stayed with me, and as I have grown older, I have grown wiser.

As a young girl, angry, lost, and innocently selfish, I wanted them to suffer. I wanted them to feel the pain I carried. But as the years passed, something in me changed. The anger softened, and the desire for them to hurt began to fade. I no longer wanted revenge; I simply wished they could understand how they made me feel.

I found it intriguing that in the lyric, she speaks of making a deal with God, as though some higher power might finally deliver a justice that the human world could not. Perhaps it is karma. Or perhaps it is something deeper: a spiritual exchange, an opportunity for rebirth and profound transformation. The idea that God could give us the gift of seeing into another person’s soul—to truly understand their pain, their motives, and the wounds they carry. And perhaps, through that understanding, give us the power to heal our own.

The longing to be understood

There is something profoundly human about wanting another person to understand what we have lived through. To make the invisible, visible.

Sometimes we try to explain ourselves over and over again. We search for the right words. We tell our story from the beginning, hoping that perhaps this time someone will finally understand the parts we cannot easily explain.

Why we reacted the way we did.

Why something affected us so deeply.

Why we struggled to speak.

Why we stayed silent.

Why we couldn't simply walk away from something that was hurting us.

Why, from the outside, our choices may have looked so different from the reality we were living on the inside. And sometimes the hardest part isn't what happened. It's knowing that someone else may never truly understand what it felt like to live through it.

That can be a very lonely place.

If only they could stand where I stood

Perhaps that is what makes the idea behind Running Up That Hill so powerful. Imagine being able to step outside yourself and exchange places with another person. For a moment, they would carry your memories.

Your fears.

Your confusion.

Your hopes.

Your private battles.

Your pain.

They would see the world through your eyes, and you would see theirs. Maybe then the misunderstandings would disappear. Maybe they would finally understand. But life doesn't usually give us that opportunity. We cannot climb inside another person's experience. We can only tell our stories. And hope someone is willing to listen.

The hill we climb

For a long time, I thought the hill represented the struggle to make someone else understand. But perhaps there is another way of looking at it. Perhaps the hill is the journey back to ourselves. There are moments in life when simply getting through the day can feel like running uphill. You keep going even when you are exhausted. You keep putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes you don't even know exactly where you are going. You simply know that you cannot remain where you are.

And perhaps that is what survival looks like sometimes. Not a dramatic transformation. Not suddenly becoming fearless. Just continuing.

One step.

Then another.

And another.

Until one day you look back and realise that you have travelled much further than you thought.

When we stop waiting for someone else to understand

There is something else I have come to understand. Sometimes we can spend years waiting for another person to validate our experience. We want them to acknowledge what happened. We want them to recognise the impact their actions had. We pray for an apology. An explanation. An admission that what we experienced was real.

And perhaps sometimes we receive those things.

But sometimes we don't.

And if our healing depends entirely on another person's ability or willingness to understand us, we can remain standing at the bottom of the hill for a very long time. There comes a point when we have to ask ourselves a different question.

What if I believe myself?

What if I stop needing someone else to confirm that my experience mattered? What if I stop measuring the truth of my story by whether somebody else accepts it? That doesn't erase what happened. It doesn't make the past disappear. But it can change the direction in which we are walking.

From being understood to understanding ourselves

Perhaps the greatest exchange of places isn't between two people at all. Perhaps it is between who we once were and who we are becoming. I can look back at earlier versions of myself with greater compassion now.

I can see the girl who was simply trying to navigate circumstances with the understanding, resources and strength available to her at the time. I don't have to judge her for not knowing what I know now.

I can meet her where she was.

And perhaps that is one of the most important forms of understanding we can ever find.

Understanding ourselves.

The hill is still there

Healing doesn't mean the hill disappears. There may still be difficult days. There may still be memories that surface unexpectedly. There may still be moments when we wish someone could finally see what we have carried. But perhaps strength isn't about reaching the top and never looking back.

Perhaps strength is knowing that you have already climbed further than you once believed possible. And perhaps freedom begins when you realise that you don't need to keep climbing for someone else's approval.

You are climbing for you.

For the person you are becoming.

For the life that exists beyond survival.

For the voice that was once difficult to find.

And for the quiet knowledge that your story belongs to you.

We may never be able to exchange places

I don't know whether we can ever truly understand another person's experience. Perhaps we can come close.

We can hold space.

We can be present.

We can listen.

We can show compassion.

We can put down our assumptions and judgements and make room for somebody else's perspective.

But we can never completely become another person. Maybe that's why empathy matters so much. Because we don't need to have lived someone's experience to believe that their experience matters. We don't need to have walked their road to offer them kindness. And we don't need someone else to walk ours before we are allowed to begin walking forward.

The hill may be steep. The journey may take longer than we imagined. But eventually, perhaps we stop asking:

“Why can't they understand me?”

And begin asking:

“How can I understand myself?”

For me, that feels like a very different kind of freedom. And perhaps that is what running up that hill can ultimately mean. Not running towards someone else's understanding.

But running towards your own freedom.

By Rosie Morris