Sound Is a Medium for Connection
“If we concentrate on the best of one another, on the best of the best of us, if we can really make the world we want to live in—even if it’s only in our own heads or in our own homes or in our own cars on the way to work—then we’ll be doing the beginning of something new.”
-Jericho Brown
When I think of connection, I do not think of its need, its want, or its presence—I think of its quality. What is the quality of the connection I am making with others? What is the quality of the connection I am making with myself?
It is not only connection we are looking for. We seemingly have an abundance of ways to connect, and one could argue the amount can be as diluted or harmful as it may be advantageous. We are watching, reading, consuming, and engaging with more information than ever, yet what is it amounting to? If we aren't cultivating better tools to create quality relationships both with ourselves and the world around us—with qualities like listening, honesty, gratitude and compassion—we are only recycling patterns of brokenness and harm.
In order to feel out what makes us alive, what makes us see and affirm the goodness in each other, we have to make space to listen. To our bodies, our rhythms, our self-talk, our expectations of others, and the world beyond our own circles, income brackets, and cultures. How might we personalize and deepen these conversations with more careful listening?
Listening not only adds to the quality of our connections, but is also in and of itself a valuable quality. Listening reveals the truth, the soft parts of life, giving us space to center and breathe. Listening is vital to the integration of ourselves and the world. It is both a portal to cultivating the quality of our connections and integral to creativity.
And yet, it is hard. In a culture of hot takes and constant content, listening is often something we aren’t taught. Listening requires practice, and its biggest requirement is attention. Often our lack of depth and felt connection in our relationships stems from a lie sold to us that the subtle and soft parts of our attention aren’t required—that we're better off cut off from, rather than connecting with, presence.
In her 2014 commencement speech at The New School, Zadie Smith said, “There will always be folks hard-selling you the life of the few: the private schools, private plans, private Islands, private life. They are trying to convince you that hell is other people. Don’t believe it. We are far more frequently each other’s shelter and correction, the antidote to solipsism, and so many windows of this world.”
I couldn’t help but see a connection within Zadie’s and Jericho’s points—this thread running through both of their words that remind us that what we focus on, both within us and in others, shapes what we become. This bent toward not escaping or allowing systems to erase the sounds of beauty we are all trying to hear. How defiant it can feel to listen with enough patience for something new to reveal itself. I hope for myself, for us, that we might find this type of defiance more often. I hope that we might seek a deeper quality of connection, one that is uniquely fulfilling and regenerative. And since listening is most often the first step toward anything new, I hope for us that we might at least begin there.
Pulse + Pause
In the morning, after I meditate, I take out my calendar and reflect on the people I’ll be interacting with that day—spending just a few seconds bringing each person into my mind and heart, reflecting on how I might show up. How might I be beneficial to this relationship and appreciate who they are? The outworking of this is never perfect, nor do I assume it will be, but this simple exercise has helped me enormously in tipping the scale here and now with what is in my hands.
How can you allow listening to be a catalyst for peace? How might you value it more in your connections? How might you begin anew?
A blessing:
Feel your very vibration
It is real—
Not simply an imagining or a tool,
But a thread of connection to those you touch,
to Mother Earth
Notice the way your vibration intertwines with another,
it tells of belonging, forming the ground with love.
