If we only listened with the same passion that we feel about being heard.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of listening to others with as much enthusiasm as we seek to be understood ourselves.
In this quote, Harriet Lerner highlights a common communication issue where individuals often prioritize their own desire to be heard over genuinely listening to others. This imbalance can lead to misunderstandings and weak connections, suggesting that true dialogue and effective relationships require us to actively engage in listening just as fervently as we wish to express ourselves.
In practice
During a team meeting to encourage better collaboration.
It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run but, it will never make you less afraid.
Telling a true story about personal experience is not just a matter of being oneself, or even or finding oneself. It is also a matter of choosing oneself.
Those of us who are locked into ineffective expressions of anger suffer as deeply as those of us who dare not get angry at all.
An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way.
Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change.
Let's create an integrated global community where we have shared benefits and responsibilities, and we don't fight because of our differences.
No matter that you're a British citizen, no matter that you were born here - your skin colour means you do not have the same rights as others to express critical opinions about your own country.
I get a little heated when I talk about the past. But I wanted to be clear - I'm not mad at anybody - not anymore.
Isnβt the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language β the amorous language? No more βI love youβs.
I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. Boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say I do. I was wrong. That's getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition.
Somewhere in his body--perhaps in the marrow of his bones--he would continue to feel her absence.
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