I truly love long meandering conversations. The podcast is proof of that, but… it goes way beyond that. As me and Beverly spoke about in episode 1, even as a young child I loved lying under the dinner table, listening to my parents and their guests having these types of conversations. Makes me smile just thinking about it!
As me and Mayke finished wrapping up our third conversation, episode 13, I told her how I love the way she listens. She listens astutely to me, but there’s more to her listening. It’s an open outward facing type of listening, where I never really know what she will come up with, and neither does she, for that matter.
Being listened to in this way, is like a sprinkling of small doors popping up here and there. Doors leading to new rooms, or even, now and again, into new universes.
Coming into a conversation like these, that we both know are to be recorded, can trigger all sorts of insecurities, in both of us.
What will we speak about today?
Will I have anything of value to add to the conversation?
What if it just goes quiet?
I put very little value on thoughts like these, by which I mean that I don’t really engage in them. Resting in the knowledge that what wants to happen will happen. And if that something is a nothing, well, then it might simply not be a pod-episode. No biggie, either.
Mayke looks at me over the Zoom-screen, her in Amsterdam, me in Malmö, and as our eyes lock, a current of love, respect, honoring and joy pass between us. She says I am talkative, but I realize that I’m born as a listener in this conversation.
Made possible in conversations with no agenda, no goal to reach, no hovering finishing line. A lovely play garden, where anything can happen. Which reminds me of something Frank said, in episode 12:
I want to give myself and others permission to know that this is part of living well, to be able to have these conversations.
Yes.
It certainly is a part of living well.
No wonder I am absolutely loving life!
Inspired by meanders from episode 1 with Beverly Delidow, episode 13 with Mayke Vullings, and episode 12 with Frank Ebbert, all episodes from the podcast Tankespjärn with Helena Roth.