Enough About Me.
In a world addicted to noise, maybe the rarest thing left is listening.
“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.” - Jimi Hendrix
We live in a world that worships noise. Volume equals value. Speed equals relevance. Whoever posts fastest, yells loudest, or performs brightest gets crowned “seen.” It’s a constant audition, a carousel of curated highs and lows, with every second turned into spectacle. Scroll long enough, and it feels less like a feed and more like a stage - everyone fighting for a spotlight that never stays still.
And I’ll admit it: I’ve played the part. I’ve told my stories, shared my heartbreaks, dressed my moments up for strangers. I’ve written pieces (that remain in the vault) that were more performance than truth, more about the idea of me than the reality of me. And I don’t regret it entirely - sometimes my words stitched me back together, sometimes my chaos reached someone who whispered “same.” But the more I sat in the spotlight of my own social bubble, the more I started asking: what happens when the spotlight itself becomes the trap?
Because the older I get, the more I realize: the world doesn’t actually need more of me. It needs more of us.
The Trap of Performance
Somewhere, the line between living and performing dissolved.
Dinner became your next Instagram story.
Breakups became content.
Even grief started looking rehearsed - like you needed receipts to prove your pain was real.
I know this cycle because I’ve lived it. I’ve taken raw moments and wrapped them in words before I’d even let myself feel them. I’ve rushed to share “wisdom” before I had any right to it. Why? Because silence felt like irrelevance. Like fading away. And when you’re addicted to being seen, invisibility feels like death.
That’s the trap. Performance feeds you, but never fills you. You’re only as good as your last post, your last outfit, your last clever thought. It breeds hunger that never ends, an appetite with no bottom. And when I get brutally honest with myself, I know most of my “sharing” hasn’t been about connection - it’s been about applause. About validation. About proof I mattered.
And really - what kind of world is that, where my worth hinges on my ability to perform?
Listening, though - listening is different. Listening is the opposite of performance. It doesn’t demand aesthetics, captions, or proof. It doesn’t ask for an audience. It just asks you to be there. Present.
When Silence Speaks Louder
The moments that have actually changed me weren’t the ones I blasted online. They weren’t the glossy paragraphs or the clever posts. They were the quiet ones.
The late-night phone calls where someone’s voice cracked, and all I could do was be there.
The pauses in conversation where truth slid out between the words.
The silence after someone said, “I don’t know what to do,” and all I could offer was space.
Those silences were holy. They held more weight than any speech I could’ve rehearsed. They reminded me that sometimes the most radical act of love is shutting up. Listening. Bearing witness without trying to fix or perform.
Silence is tenderness. It isn’t emptiness - it’s a container. A place where things too fragile for noise can actually take shape. Performance demands sparkle and speed. Listening demands patience, humility, stillness.
And maybe that’s why it feels so rare.
The Culture of Constant Speech
Look around. Everyone’s talking. Think-pieces. Podcasts. Threads. Captions. Vlogs. Millions of voices screaming into the static, each one clawing for relevance. It’s a global shout-fest, and the volume never drops.
But how much of it do we actually absorb?
How much of it lands?
Most of the time, we skim. We scroll past people’s lives like highlight reels. Hell maybe you are scrolling past this as we speak! We hear without listening. We respond without understanding. We curate without caring.
And still - underneath all that noise -people are starving. Not to be applauded. Not to be reposted. Just to be heard. To feel like their voice matters somewhere, to someone.
Which makes me wonder: maybe listening is the rarest currency left.
Maybe it’s more radical than a viral post. More human than a perfect caption.
Because when you really listen to someone, you give them something performance never could: proof they exist. Proof they’re not invisible.
Borrowed Lessons
Most of the resilience I’ve learned hasn’t come from my own story - it’s come from watching. From listening.
None of these moments belonged to me. But because I was paying attention, they shaped me. That’s the gift of listening: it multiplies your life. You stop living in the confines of your own story. You become a mosaic as I have said before - made up of the voices you honored enough to carry.
Listening is how you inherit lives you never lived. It’s how you stretch beyond yourself.
The Temptation to Interrupt
I wish I could say I always listen well. But the truth? I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve cut someone off - not because I didn’t care, but because silence scared me.
A pause felt like a void, and I rushed to fill it - with my own stories, my own thoughts, my own relevance. I turned other people’s confessions into invitations to talk about myself.
But when I look back, I see what those interruptions cost me. They stole depth. They stole honesty. They stole the intimacy that only arrives when you let someone else’s truth take center stage.
Listening is hard because it requires surrender. You can’t control it, can’t polish it, can’t rehearse it. You just sit there and let someone else’s world invade yours. And that’s terrifying. But it’s also necessary.
“You’re not even listening, are you? You’re just waiting for your turn to talk.” - Lorelai Gilmore (Gilmore Girls)
Why Listening Feels So Radical
Listening sounds simple, but in this culture? It’s rebellion.
The world tells us to stay “on,” to maximize output, to share, share, share. Pausing feels dangerous. Stillness feels wasteful. But listening says: you are not measured by your volume. You are measured by your presence.
That flips everything. That rewrites worth.
And maybe that’s the shift I want this column to take, too. It started as me telling my story. But maybe the real power isn’t in monologues - it’s in conversations. Maybe the value isn’t me being the loudest voice, but creating a space where voices collide.
Because here’s the truth: the world doesn’t need another performer. It needs more witnesses.
A Different Kind of Column
So maybe this becomes less about me and more about us. Less about spotlight, more about threads. Less about “main character energy,” more about the echoes that tie us to each other.
That doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing about my life. It just means I want to write differently. With fewer declarations and more questions. With more room for silence. With more listening baked into the words.
Because the best stories aren’t always the ones we tell about ourselves. Sometimes, they’re the ones we collect when we finally stop talking long enough to hear.
A Call to Quiet
If you’re still with me, here’s the invitation:
Resist the urge to perform. Let some moments breathe without proof or evidence.
Practice presence. When someone speaks, stop planning your response. Just hear them.
Notice borrowed light. Pay attention to the ways other people’s lives glow - and allow that light to alter you.
Honor silence. It isn’t absence. It’s a vessel. It holds truths that need room to bloom.
Anyway, enough about me.
Tell me about you.
