Listening Isn’t the Same as Hearing

A reflection on how good intentions and respect can still miss the mark — and why real listening requires curiosity, not certainty.

Seeing an advert for compression leggings made me stop and think, not because of the product, but because of what it revealed.

It made me realise that while I heard my mother, I didn’t always listen.

I believed I was doing the right thing. I tried to live by the principles I was raised with: to listen to your parents’ worries, to respect them, and to remember “filho és, pai serás” — you are a child today; one day, you will be the parent. Or you know the karma stuff.

And in practical terms, I did behave respectfully. I didn’t argue. I didn’t dismiss her outright. When conversations became overwhelming, I disengaged calmly and took my frustration elsewhere. On the surface, I did everything “right”.

But respect and attentiveness are not the same thing.

When my mother spoke about her legs, the swelling, the pain, the hard lumps, I interpreted everything through what I believed was a medically rational lens. Heart problems. Kidney problems. Oedema. I explained rather than explored. I corrected rather than questioned.

She, meanwhile, was trying to describe something lived and physical: pain that didn’t match what she was being told. She asked me to “go on the internet” and look things up. I didn’t. Internally, I minimised it. Not out of malice, but out of confidence that I already understood.

That assumption was the miss.

My mother came from a generation that trusted doctors and medication almost without question. One prescription led to another, often to manage side effects, until her health became a complex stack rather than a coherent picture. Her decline wasn’t caused by neglect but rather it was shaped by a system that treated symptoms in isolation.

Watching that influenced how I live now. I question side effects. I stop medication when harm outweighs benefit. I work with doctors, but I don’t outsource responsibility for my body.

What I failed to see was that my mother was actually signalling something specific, something that didn’t fit neatly into the explanations she was being given.

When I finally read that ad properly, it became clear: she wasn’t talking about weight. She wasn’t talking about cellulite. She was describing lymphoedema.

That realisation was painful.

Not abstract. Not softened by time. My mother died in September 2025. We are now in January 2026. This is still raw. Still close. Still felt in the body.

What I felt wasn’t dramatic guilt. It was the heavier awareness that there were things I could have done. Not to change the outcome but to reduce her burden.

She felt ashamed of what her body was doing to her. She felt trapped by it. She grieved the loss of things that had always defined her sense of purpose: walking independently, cooking, baking cakes for her grandchildren, being useful through care.

And I could have helped make some of that possible again for longer.

Not by fixing everything.

But by listening differently.

By researching.

By advocating.

By helping adapt her world so she could still participate in the parts of life that gave her dignity and joy.

That’s the part that hurts.

Not that I didn’t love her.

Not that I disrespected her.

But that I was capable and didn’t fully realise it at the time.

The lesson here isn’t regret. It’s recalibration.

Listening isn’t passive.

Respect isn’t enough.

And love, without action and curiosity, can still fall short.

That’s what I have learned and don’t want to forget.

See, the point is…

Listening isn’t passive.

Respect alone doesn’t guarantee understanding.

And love, without action and curiosity, can still miss something important.

We don’t fail people because we don’t care.

We fail them when we’re certain we already know.

Listening is an active responsibility, not a passive courtesy. Love is an active verb.

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