I'll listen for you not to you and we will learn together

I've had a lot come at me of late and it's triggered some serious reflecting.
It's not really about what's right or wrong because there is no right or wrong.

It's about listening.

I'm sure it's something we can all attest to at one point or other, thinking that opening our ears to someone who has something to say and then thinking our words of wisdom will help.

I've learned that sometimes the best wisdom we can bestow is to listen differently.

We listen TO each other but we don't listen FOR each other.

Listening to requires being present and hearing and trying to give our own two cents.

Listening FOR means we are hearing not only what is being said but also who the person is who's saying it.

It feels good for ME when I can impart wisdom.

That's about me.

I have to get me out of the way.

When someone is asking me to listen, he is telling me HE wants to be heard. Not just his words but WHO he is in saying them.

I can spend all day rationalizing what I think will be helpful to someone else, but that's what I think.

Again, that's about me and my agenda and my trying to run someone else's life.

The best kind of support I can give is seeing him and listening to where he is coming from.

An attack will never create resolve.

My judgment and opinions are an attack.

It's better to come from this place:

"what I see from this is this (insert example), help me understand what YOU see".

Even the closest people I can account for in my life are not 100% obvious to me. Just like I am not 100% obvious to them. If I spend all my time trying to get what they are saying and stick it to them, what the hell is that going to do? Where the hell is that going to get me?

Nowhere.

And it isn't going to make them budge either.

To support a breakdown is to listen FOR.

For the person who's hurting.

For the person who needs my support.

For the person who wants so desperately to find his own resolve and happiness.

Not for me.

Not for my way of "giving".

Not for my own abilities.

Because that makes me a know at all. It makes me a person who sees herself as actualized and ahead of the game and in it, not watching it.

That's what it's about.

Listening FOR gives me the chance to be in it and one with the person who's asked that I lend that ear.

It's not about me.
It's not about them.
It's about happiness and finding it in others to foster it in ourselves.