Listening Project

I am practicing this intensive listening project and instead of finding that I come closer to those around me I find I hear dissonance. I've usually reacted to the dissonance but now I am even more aware of it. The way that people don't listen to each other is apparent in conversations. I feel angry and I feel the need to calm myself down. I have never heard before how much in my mom's speech that I am always to put myself first. This doesn't fit for how I live, that community is the most important. It is too much to deal with, this darling, ambitious, first place seeking, wonderchild that she roots for me to be. She wants the world for me and she wants me to have the world. I feel extremely unmotivated to live to her standard, especially since she is a workaholic and doesn't put the same "be number one" requirements on herself. Forgiveness is not living a life of rebellion but rather one of stability. It's forgetting about how much I do not like constantly being pressured to be Number One, but to realize I am already living inside a different life and that I am still committed to my listening project.