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Thursday, January 9, 2014

Think Out Loud: Listening is not easy



This is Think out Loud. It’s a weekly meme created to help bloggers break out from the blogging bubble. The rules are simple. We post whatever we want and let people know what’s in our mind. Visit the creator on Thinks Books and join too. It’s so cool to share your random thoughts.


I’m a listener. I’m a focused and a good listener. Hell, I’m the definition of listener! Really sometimes I think I should have followed another career. I should have been a psychiatrist.  

I don’t know why this is happening but people around me talk to me about stuff and I listen. I say my opinion, I try to help and I listen more. Every time I go for coffee with a friend I hardly talk. They have so much to tell me and I let them. I like to share my opinion, to give one or two advices if I can, but lately I realized that I hardly talk. I like listening, but what about the things I want to share?

The times I try to say something about me, I end up talking about five minutes, because then the other person wants to talk and I let her. I guess they have to say it out loud to feel better.

Through this listening process I realized I that I don’t really want to talk about my stuff. I talk only to a handful of people and that’s enough. I talk only to my closest friends and that is all I need. But I wasn’t always like that.

In high school I was completely different. I had two best friends that I shared everything. We even talked on the phone about the clothes we were going to wear before we meet for coffee. I used to spend all day with them at school, out for walks, for coffees, and then at home studying, and we only parted for sleep. We went on holidays together, we traveled with each other’s family. We were a family. And then some pretty shitty things happened and I lost the earth under my feet.

That was the moment something changed inside me. Something cracked and I changed. It wasn’t an instant change, but it was radical. I realized that some people are just not worth sharing your deepest thoughts and desires. So I learned to pick my friends better, but even after that I can’t call someone best friend. Friend yeah, but best friend like those years, I don’t have.

I like to talk to people who really care to listen to me and not pretend to listen, or listen just to make fun of me. 

So I’m a listener. A dearly devoted listener to those I care and a talker to a few people that have a special place in my heart. To those who really deserve it.


How about you? Are you a listener? 

6 comments:

  1. This post made me emotional, Athina. The way you describe your best friends and then the end of those relationships sound so painful. Being a listener is amazing. I'm trying to be a better listener and I chastise myself when I realize I did too much talking and not enough listening. It's an amazing trait. And your words are just as important as your friends' words. I had best friends when I was a kid, but then I moved very far away. And amazing and terrible things happened that changed me. They don't know me anymore. I don't know them anymore. We say hi on FB, but I can't be real with so much time and distance between us. I smile at the memories and then I try to veer my thoughts in a different direction before I hit the end. Wonderful TOL post, Athina.

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    1. Those were some painful years. It was a year and half before we leave town for University, but now I'm thinking about it, seems like a dream.

      When you move it's almost given you will lose contact with friends. I'm sorry that distance was the reason to lose those relationships, Robyn, but I'm sure you met new people.
      I can't imagine what terrible things happened to you but maybe it happened for a reason. Will you be the same person you are now if those nasty things didn't happen?
      Think about it this way. :)

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  2. I'm more of a listener than a talker, too. I've always been quiet and shy, though, so I'm not really surprised about that, heh.

    But wow, I am so, so sorry you went through what you did and can no longer consider anyone a best friend. I agree, it's best to be cautious about who we open ourselves up too, but losing that closeness with someone must've been jarring...

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    1. Until that time I didn't know how it was to lose a person from your life and I was pretty shaken. Now I see them on the street when I go back in my home town and it's like see strangers. I feel nothing about them.

      You should talk more, Heather. If you have some who deserve to hear you, talk!:)

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  3. Wow. I feel you Athina. I'm a listener too, have been my who life. Being a psychiatrist was one of my choices during my senori year in high school but I took a different route.
    I only have one close friend out of all the friends I had in high school whom I still see and talk too. She is the one that talks while I listen. It's funny because it works. Even after 8 years of friendship we still don't know eachother that well.

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    1. Yes, it's one thing to have friends, but quite another to have best friends. I'm not really sure if the latest really exist. In that category it's only my sister, but she is not a friend, she is family so I don't know if that counts. :)

      It's a little awkward to know her for 8 years and yet to feel like you don't know her that well, but on the other hand, maybe that's what keep the friendship alive. Huh?

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