Empathetic Listening

September 2021

Hello Friends.

The other day, I had a wonderful conversation with a friend about empathetic listening. After digging around the topic, this person expressed fear in feeling depleted by the heightened needs of the world. There was a sincere hesitation to really engage in empathetic listen. She feared feeling responsible and the need to ‘help’ the other person. She wanted to help, but life problems can feel insurmountable and complicated, and she expressed feeling overwhelmed by her stuff as it is. 

According to Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks who spoke at The Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival this past summer, human beings do not enjoy transition, but we are now living in time of a lot of transition! Every 10 years we are experiencing massive collective transitions, and this is interspersed with un-welcomed personal transitions, which occur every 18 months or so. 

How do each of us continue to walk our individual paths, find resilience, vibrancy, acceptance, and the courage and capacity to grow and change while meeting our fellow travelers with love and compassion without feeling depleted? 

I have always had a particular interest in seeking out that which authentically connects us. Most spiritual paths and practices help us find our ‘True Nature’, that part of ourselves that is bigger than our ‘little s’ self. Those practices cultivate an awareness of being interconnected to all life.  

There is a second equally important place we all connect – that is our inner opponent. At different times in our lives, we each can experience depression, anxiety, panic attacks, worry, avoidance, insecurities, a lack of commitment in relationships, frustrations, sabotage, perceptible coolness, jealousy, competitiveness, impulsivity, addiction, laziness, negativity, loneliness and so on. Our inner opponent allows a sense of defeat to take hold. 

Being aware that those emotions and experiences happen to each of us, we can feel safe engaging in deep empathetic listening. We are all fellow travelers in life, albeit our journeys are each unique. We all have the answers we seek within us, and just having someone to listen to us with a caring heart IS help enough. In listening empathetically to one another, our hearts grow bigger, we better relate to one another, and find collective wisdom. Listening to others often awakens our own process to finding internal answers too.

To give and receive love, to listen to other people, to accept what life brings, to be patient, to use our spiritual and emotional abilities that work inside us are the essence of what it means to be human. I have made a commitment to practice empathetic listening. Through that commitment, I find my heart softening, my interest in others widening, and my inspiration soaring! It isn’t always easy, but every time I walk away from a sincere conversation, I feel grateful for having been in it. We can have big hearts to match our big world! 

Anne White
Executive Director