We have invented so many ways to protect ourselves from the risks of genuine connection. The small death of being truly seen, the vulnerability of being heard and found wanting, the heartbreak of discovering that another person cannot save us from our fundamental loneliness. And so we listen with reserve, with one ear tuned to escape, with the half-attention of those who have already decided what the other person will say before they say it.
But there is no aliveness greater than the moment when another person finally stops trying to rescue you and simply hears you. Here’s when listening becomes an act of recognition.
Ximena Vengoechea's Listen Like You Mean It is an invitation away from the comfortable distance we maintain in our conversations, toward the riskier territory where real connection lives. It is a guide to the small, consequential choice to show up fully to another person's words, to resist the urge to solve and save, to let silence mean something.
To listen like you mean it is to live like you mean it. To refuse the petrification of safety and engage with the uncertain, gasping, blood-filled reality of being in relation to another human being.
We have invented so many ways to protect ourselves from the risks of genuine connection. The small death of being truly seen, the vulnerability of being heard and found wanting, the heartbreak of discovering that another person cannot save us from our fundamental loneliness. And so we listen with reserve, with one ear tuned to escape, with the half-attention of those who have already decided what the other person will say before they say it.
But there is no aliveness greater than the moment when another person finally stops trying to rescue you and simply hears you. Here’s when listening becomes an act of recognition.
Ximena Vengoechea's Listen Like You Mean It is an invitation away from the comfortable distance we maintain in our conversations, toward the riskier territory where real connection lives. It is a guide to the small, consequential choice to show up fully to another person's words, to resist the urge to solve and save, to let silence mean something.
To listen like you mean it is to live like you mean it. To refuse the petrification of safety and engage with the uncertain, gasping, blood-filled reality of being in relation to another human being.