I read a thing somewhere, “Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, just make your absence felt”, and I just can’t get it.
I want to become a master of listening — be able to open up to new worlds inside other people.
The thing is that this kind of opening means giving up your own opinion, your own stories and personal experience — your own identity. How can you feel an absence of a person with no identity?
The balance (or not a balance) between opening to new and keeping your own is an exercise which drives me crazy. Too immersed in other people’s things — and you become an insignificant detail in general landscape, too focused on your own ideas — and you are a lonely rider unable to collaborate.
However, this might be a wrong way of thinking in black and white — may be it’s not about the balance, but about mastering a completely new skill. About becoming a perfectly resilient system, which is able to receive and accept new influences, changing under them — but always keeping its own main principle.
No shame and no danger in giving up opinions and stories — but always be faithful for your main core, for who you are. Just a small thing is left — to figure it out.