Are We Really Listening
A companion piece to *That Anger, That Pain* — about the small lies we trade and the harder act of actually hearing each other.
Most of us answer how are you? on autopilot. The honest answer takes more time than the question’s asking for. This is for the moments where we shorthand each other into smaller versions of ourselves.
Only a fleeting moment
Forever lost in time
Were you happy?
Or proving a point?
When you answer, “How are you?”
How often do you say your truth?
Expressing that anger, that pain…
These times are for listening
More than ever before
But are we really listening…
To that anger, that pain?
That anger, that pain shows up again here — the same refrain from the earlier poem, asked in the other direction. The first one was about feeling it. This one is about whether anyone around us is actually receiving it when we try to share it.
The hardest gift you can give someone is full attention. Not waiting-to-respond attention. Not phone-down-but-mind-elsewhere attention. The real thing. It’s rare. It’s also free.
— JTC