People may be loud about the way that they fit into the expectations of others — what they also hate, how they also suffer, where they agree — but somehow, we are rarely as vociferous about where we differ from the people around us.
We are noisy about our shared travails, but we are quiet about our unique visions. We know that our family and peers won’t buy, so after we float a little trial balloon, we back off, turn it down, keep ourselves on the QT.
The more precious, powerful and different bits we have are the ones that we keep most hidden.
We shout about how we meet expectations, but we just barely whisper about our most potent dreams.
Having those secret dreams crushed would just be too much for us. We would be too vulnerable, too exposed if people knew where we held our own unique visions of what is possible.
If you love someone, really love them, then one of the most important things you can do is listen closely when they whisper.
Accessing and affirming their deepest dreams, the ones they keep protected in their own darkness, well, that is the way you help them blossom in the world, help them become so much more powerfully themselves.
The tender parts of us are where our own distinctive and unique power has been pounded down in the process of teaching us to fit in, to be one of the gang. We are tamed into concealing our own wild hopes, into submerging our own bold creativity.
Anyone can affirm the comfortable and appropriate in someone, but affirming the exquisite and shimmering takes more.
When someone you love whispers, listen.
Be there to mirror that small, tenuous, trepidatious voice, showing that you hear it, revealing that you support them even in the places they are afraid to claim. Help them trust that revealing their dreams is the first step to embodying their dreams, becoming bigger, more potent and more powerfully themselves in the world.
The most potent bits that we can share are first exposed in whispers. We want to see if anyone will say “Yes!” or if we need to hide our oh so special parts away again.
Listening close, really close, lets you hear, expose and affirm the deepest parts of other people.
To cherish someone’s dreams, you have to care about their whispers, about what lies beyond and behind the big noises they make.
All deep dreams first surface as whispers. Only some of them, though, get enough love to help change a life, change a community or even to change a world.
Callan 