Conversation

Due to the nature of my work, I often have conversations with people.
I often find myself listening to what people have to say.

Conversations within a structured framework
Conversations without a structured framework
Conversations among peers and friends
Conversations based on hierarchical or lateral relationships and roles
Casual conversations, including venting

Conversations take many different forms.
I spend my days
always feeling the differences between those conversations.

When I was previously attending a correspondence university for psychology,
there was an assignment about the difference between counseling and conversation.
I am realizing that difference more than ever before.

I realize now that in ordinary conversations until now,
I had been listening too empathetically.

It makes sense now why listening to people
without a framework is so exhausting.

I am realizing, belatedly, that the casual daily conversations we have
are actually quite arbitrary.

Using the word 'arbitrary' might be misleading, but
things that are structured to some extent
have a sense of protection.

Compared to that,
daily conversation
feels crude and exposed.

There is nothing to protect it,
and it can be a space that is easily intruded upon.

It is left to relationships,
order and manners,
or the personality of each individual,
as well as their values and sensibilities.

In such a free, ambiguous, and empty space,
we engage in conversation freely.

That is why we sometimes clash,
sometimes feel sad,
sometimes get hurt,
and sometimes get exhausted.

But there are also happy things,
and fun things too.

I think that speaking freely without thinking too deeply
is what daily conversation is all about.

That is why I truly realize that 'listening' (cho) is a skill,
distinct from just 'hearing' (kiku).

Between people,
it is difficult to distinguish between self and others.

Since everyone lives in their own world,
they quickly forget
where the boundaries lie.

Without realizing it,
they expand their own world outward.

We are protected because there is a certain framework.

Freedom is sometimes restrictive,
exposed, ambiguous, and defenseless.

In my daily life now, I have more conversations with people,
more listening, hearing, and speaking.

When I ask myself why I am
so much less tired than before,
I find that

the decisive difference
is that I am able to clearly distinguish between self and others.

I felt that was it.

Until now, even in daily life,
I would sometimes get too close,

and I think I was
unintentionally absorbing various energies.

In the past, because it was hard to distinguish between self and others,
even though I wanted to cherish myself,
there was a time when I worried
about becoming ambiguous.

I knew that my boundaries were thin.
I also received feedback from those around me and from psychologists.
That is why I devised, learned, and practiced ways to address it.

People who get tired from being too kind,
people who get tired from being too devoted,
people who lash out emotionally—

they are in a place without a framework, without boundaries,
doing things that do not protect them.

A boundary is not a line that separates,
but a line of manners.
It is a line that protects each other.

The line I use to protect myself and the line the other person uses to protect themselves—
each has their own line.

When you understand how to distinguish between self and others,
you become less likely to feel stress.

I realize now, more than ever,
that freedom is ambiguous and vulnerable.

As I understand the various differences—differences in conversation, differences in mechanisms, differences in settings—
the contours of how to distinguish between self and others are traced.

When one's way of being is maintained,
one thinks of nothing; in other words,
not letting things into oneself more than necessary
becomes something one can do naturally.

Perhaps it is because I am thinking about distinctions when listening to others,
these are the kinds of days I have been feeling lately...

June 6, 2025

・・Thank you for reading・・

#PuttingHeartIntoWords
#Essay
#Column
#Metacognition
#SelfAndOther
#Conversation
#Dialogue
#Boundaries
#Listening