Listening: Learning to Love Others Where They Are
listening
learning to love others where they are
I’ve always thought of myself as someone who listens – a “good listener”.
That when someone comes to me, I am able to really hold space to receive what they’re hoping to share with me in that moment. I set aside my own needs and just listen. Not just waiting for my turn to share, not hoping for them to finish quickly, but really being with them in a moment of vulnerability and trying to hear “what is this person trying to share with me right now?” And with the deeply Pisces-Virgo-Scorpio energy I carry, I take very seriously the opportunity to learn about another, to get past the individual words and directly to the heart of the matter. I pride myself on being an emotional detective – there is little I love more than sitting with someone, intimately and vulnerably, to find the depths of what’s hidden in their words. Always sharply focused and working so that I can hear what they’re really wanting to say.
But this kind of listening has not always served me.
I often find myself in conversations where I am telling someone:
you are so much more than either of us can imagine!
you are everything, and you are capable of everything!
you are so much more than this!
It may be during an argument where I feel someone has done wrong by me, and I am telling them how I know they have more to offer to the situation, that they can choose differently. It may be in a situation where I’m encouraging someone to pursue an opportunity I’m certain they want more deeply, telling them that I know they can do anything they set in their intention – and that I will be there through the whole process.
at some point, i notice that i am doing a lot of telling in my listening.
When I think back on all the time and different relationships I’ve experienced, one moment in particular stands out: a time when I first noticed what an exceptional listener I am.
Someone I saw as a partner, at the time, was telling me about their childhood experiences, about how they felt growing up as the last child among their siblings, and how that experience may have been different for their siblings. I heard this. And excited by them sharing about something I had long wanted to explore together, I also heard more. I heard them reflecting on their relationship with their parents. I heard them wondering about their role in the family, one among many. I heard them asking if they were at fault for some of the pains they had all experienced.
And I let them know that I heard this. And they continued the story. And so I let them know that I was hearing them- I offered up, more explicitly, some of these questions I already heard them asking. I did this several times, feeling how close we were to the beauty of really acknowledging and feeling through some deep hurts, and each time, they continued the conversation along the same lines as how they had started, not pausing to (from my perspective) really honor the depth of this moment. As the conversation continued, it didn’t. Nothing about what either of us were saying was progressing, and eventually, we both got frustrated: them, because it felt like I was interrupting a story they were trying to share with me, and me, because it felt like they were wasting an opportunity to go deeper. I couldn’t understand why, with so much clearly sitting between us, they were opting to throw away all that potential.
and i didn’t need to understand.
I could have just listened to a story that someone I loved wanted to share with me.
What I have learned, since, is that in some ways, I am an exceptional listener – one of the sharpest. And in some ways, in some moments, the way I show up is shit.
This really all comes down to the question of “what is communication for?”
With my background in language and discourse studies, I might say language serves many purposes, that it can be used to convey information, generally, that it can be used to build rapport between people, and much beyond – there are many things we can do with our words. But as just a person seeing how other people use language to communicate, I see that most of the time, they aren’t using it to directly open up and negotiate their feelings.
Do I think this is one of the most fundamental problems in society? Absolutely.
Do I pray and work every day for this to change? Incessantly.
Is it still a current reality in the world? Yes, and I can grow by learning to work with this truth.
The problem I face in relationships is not that I have hopes for others, but rather when I am only able to listen in one way.
when i am so determined to listen on the level i want to hear
that I might as well just be telling.
When I talk about listening, I define it mainly in two ways:
listening, which is taking others’ words at the level that they most immediately intend them.
and listening deeply, which is taking others’ words at what we can observe them to mean more completely, in the context of deeper desires and hurts.
I believe with all of my being that we are so many things beyond what we know, that the fullness of our spirit, our magick, our depths, our light and our dark, we only know a small part of it. And part of my life-work on this earth, I feel, is to reawaken a place for us to dream of something more, something that already exists within but has been forgotten.
Part of being animal is constantly interpreting and negotiating our interpersonal relationships, anyhow, and I wholly reject the cultural maxims of “don’t try to change other people” or “people are who they are” or even “people know themselves best” – change is inevitable and something we influence with one another every day, so I find no problem in that negotiating, in arguing collaboratively towards what we believe is true. I know that I exist in multiplicities, as so many potentials that I can find in myself in any moment, and someone asking me to grow into another part of my-self is not a violence, it is an invitation to know myself more closely – a gift. I dream of others knowing this in themselves.
In no moment do I fault myself for listening beyond someone’s words to hear the deeper message, but I do fault myself
if that is the only way i can listen.
In each of the moments where I have found myself trying to convince another person of their potentials, I have made the choice not to hear the simple version of what they were saying.
When someone hurts me and I want to tell them they are not this person, that they are more than how they are being with me, I can hear that they are saying: this is who I am choosing to be with you.
When someone is continually not witnessing part of my beauty and I want to tell them that I understand it may take time to adjust to something ‘new’ and queer, I can also hear them saying: I am not witnessing you, and I am not taking the time to adjust.
When someone tells me they don’t know what they bring to a relationship or they don’t think they’re worth it, as much as I want to yell out “of course, you are worth it and you have so much to offer!”, I can simply hear them saying: I am not aware of what I have to offer.
This does not mean I am making a call on who’s worth it or that I am conceding to the idea that anyone is undeserving of love. It specifically means that I am not making that call. It means that I stop making decisions for others and honor what they choose. It means that I allow myself to be more than a constant teacher, guide, nurturer, lover, and ever-patient companion; I also get to be someone with needs. It means honoring myself by not remaining in situations where someone is repeatedly telling me they are not choosing to be with me.
I cannot name the number of times I have been in relationships where I didn’t know how to listen, and while I see it as beautiful to carry such a devotion to growth, change, pushing, transforming, deconstructing, deepening, and reclaiming, it has also led me to many painful places with others. I think this is what movies and books talk about as ‘being in love with the idea of someone, not the person, themself’. I have understood myself as determinedly choosing to be in love with both people – (both are just made of ideas) – but now I am more willing to meet whichever one(s) they bring forward in a given moment.
I have long known myself to be a “good listener”, but am now practicing the skill of listening for how others are determined to show up, for what they choose. To know that all are deserving of compassion, but that closeness and devotion are earned. To be discerning about who I gift the nearness of my time, space, and care – honoring connections not by the million merits of their spirit, but by the few words they choose to embody.
So,
may we be listening deeply.
May we love others in all the ways they do not know how to love themselves. May we be constantly dreaming. May we be constantly reaching. May we remind each other of how we are the stars; may we love each other across time and space. May we unashamedly love others for all the things they have been and have yet to be again.
And when the moment calls for it, may we also just know how to listen – how to love others where they are now.
Amani Michael
intuit.hue founder + guide
