Storytelling requires a narrator and a listener. It is the way we share experiences and discoveries, along with a host of information and nuanced emotions that make up our human condition.
Within that exchange, it is easy to sense the familiar and to feel that “we are all one.” What we miss, sometimes, is the person inside of it.
As listeners, we may recognize an experience so readily that our own story begins to fill the space. We remember something similar happening to us, and the recognition feels warm. There is companionship in knowing that someone else has been there too.
A friend is telling us about leaving a job. We remember the relief we felt when we finally left ours, and we’re ready to share that feeling. Then our friend mentions missing the people they worked with, and we begin to hear what leaving meant to them.
The experience is familiar. The person’s relationship with it is still unfolding as they speak, and there is more to hear than our own memory can supply.
I think this is where a sense of unity can deepen. Recognizing something shared gives us a place to begin listening. We can stay curious about the person telling the story, even when we think we already know where it is going.
That takes a little patience with ourselves. Our own story has pulled up a chair and would quite like a turn. We can let it wait while our friend finishes, allowing the conversation to become something neither of us could have supplied alone.
“We are all one” holds a beautiful possibility. Yet if we take it to mean that we must feel much the same about a familiar experience, we can lose sight of the person whose voice brought that experience into the conversation.
Shared being can hold the relief we remember alongside the sadness our friend is describing. Both belong in the exchange. We can recognize our connection and still let our friend tell us something we would never have discovered by consulting our own experience.
There is an intimacy in listening that far. We have stayed with our friend’s story long enough to hear what the experience meant to them, and perhaps that is where a lovely phrase begins to acquire a little more life.