Learning to Love: Listening

  Life's deepest meaning and fulfillment is found in relationships built on love. Life is meant to be a shared experience of self giving and receiving from others. One of the key skills that make relationships satisfying is the ability to really hear one another. To really 'know' one another we first need to hear one another at every level of reality. Who are you really? Who am I? Listen, really listen and you discover the deeper and more profound layers of reality that is the person you seek to know and love.

  When we really want to know and love someone, we develop an intensity and focus that moves us beyond casual observation. Distracted and selfish people make poor lovers and horrible friends. The selfish man and woman demand that the universe circle around their own demands and desires. The ability to really hear is dependent on seeing the value in the object of your desire and love. When we lay aside the mirrors focused on self we begin to see the reality that self satisfaction is dependent on relationships of sacrifice and giving. As St. Francis has said, "It's in giving to all men that we receive, and in dying (to self) that we are born to eternal life."

  The ability to perceive and enjoy beauty is dependent on being immersed in truth. Lies distort beauty and bend it to the will of lust and the externals of appearance.  When we begin to love others in purity, we begin to hear things others ignore and belittle. The beauty of a child's laughter, the whisper of wisdom from a grandfather, the unspoken hopes of a youth in transition, the poetic desire of blooming love, all serve to open our hearts to what really matters: love in all its forms, ages, shapes and realities. We were born for one another in an endless circle of relational love.

  Listening takes time. It says you are worthy of waiting and straining in the direction of knowing who you really are.  It says, "Tell me your story, I really want to know you, I am not in a hurry, you are worthy of my time....my life and my all." Are you a good listener?

  Do you want to know love in all its depth and beauty? You will have to learn to listen! You cannot love, really and truly love someone that you don't have respect for. You cannot respect someone that you're not truly listening to. Love listens carefully for what has been said, what isn't being said and for what needs to be said.

Love Listens.