by Margaret Wheatley

Listening to someone. Simply listening. Not advising or coaching, but silently and fully listening. Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell someone our story, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances. I have seen the great healing power of good listening so often that I wonder if you’ve noticed it also.

There may have been a time when a friend was telling you such a painful story that you became speechless. You couldn’t think of anything to say, so you just sat there, listening closely, but not saying a word. And what was the result of your heartfelt silence, of your listening?

A young, black South African woman taught some of my friends the healing power of listening. She was sitting in a circle of women from many nations, and each woman had the chance to tell
a story from her life. When her turn came, she began to quietly tell a story of true horror—of how she had found her grandparents
slaughtered in their village. Many of the women were Westerners, and in the presence of such pain they instinctively wanted to do something. They wanted to fix it, to make it better—anything to remove the pain of this tragedy from such a young life. The young woman felt their compassion, but also felt them closing in.
She put her hands up, as if to push back their desire to help. She said: “I don’t need you to fix me. I just need you to listen to me.”

Why is being heard so healing? I don’t know the full answer to that question, but I do know it has something to do with the fact that listening creates relationship.

We know from science that nothing in the Universe exists as an isolated or independent entity. Everything takes form from relationships, be it subatomic particles sharing energy or ecosystems sharing food. In the web of life, nothing living lives alone. Our natural state is to be together. Though we keep moving away from each other, we haven’t lost the need to be in relationship.

Everybody has a story, and everybody wants to tell their story in order to connect. If no one listens, we tell it to ourselves
and then we go mad. In the English language, the word for health comes from the same root as the word for whole. We can’t be healthy if we’re not in relationship. And whole is from the same root word as holy. Listening moves us closer; it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation always causes more suffering.

How many teenagers today, in many lands, state that no one listens to them? They feel ignored and discounted, and in pain they turn to each other to create their own subcultures. I’ve heard two great teachers—Malidoma Somé from Burkina Faso in West Africa, and Parker Palmer from the United States— both make this comment: “You can tell a culture is in trouble when its elders walk across the street to avoid meeting its youth.” It is impossible to create a healthy culture if we refuse to meet, and if we refuse to listen. But if we meet, and when we listen, we reweave the world into wholeness. And holiness.

I love the biblical passage: “Whenever two or more are gathered, I am there.” It describes for me the holiness of moments of real listening. The health, wholeness, holiness of a new relationship forming. I have a T-shirt from one conference that reads: “You can’t hate someone whose story you know.” You don’t have to like the story, or even the person telling you their story.

But listening creates a relationship. We move closer to one another.