Chess Openings: Memorizing vs. Understanding.

Hi Everyone!

I believe I have reached a point in my chess where my openings are the weakest part of my game. What is your experience in learning the openings? Do you memorize? Do you do something else? There are so many lines and ideas to remember. How do you do it? Thanks for your help!

For me openings were the last thing i worked on.  What I did was find openings i enjoyed playing.  What I mean by that is openings that gave me middle games i wanted to play. 

I started by playing over GM games with those openings, trying to understand the basics:

Why do the pieces and pawn go where they go?

What are the basic middle game ideas/plans?

Then I started using what I learned in OTB play.  Did my own analysis, used chessbase with the mega game database, and compared what I played with what was normally played. 

understanding is not that difficult mate. you must always ask yourself were pieces want to go strategically while keeping an eye out on the tactical realities of a position . if you dont know why a move is theory, see how an engine punishes you, and then see how play continues in the theoretical line.

memorizing is understanding without the dialectic. 

Understanding the idea seems to be far more better, because one deviation and your memorisation is gone. Not even counting that you will simply doubt if a line you memorized was the correct one. Happened to me a lot.