It’s a running joke between my friends and family that I’m always talking to the wind. The breeze hears my bitterness, my overzealous conversations are lost to the zephyr, the gusts gather my grievances and my chattering chases the currents as they’re scattered like secrets never meant to be uncovered. Being at a school filled with big personalities and opportunities that I could barely even dream of, I often feel like I’m even less heard.
From my friends designating my section of Introduction to Fiction and Poetry as the “Kaylee Yap Class” to my inability to shut up during study sessions, I know that I have a habit of filling silences before they even have a chance to settle. I talk because I have thoughts that bubble over — because I’m excited that I am part of something. I convinced myself that the wind, at least, never tells me I talk too much. It doesn’t sigh when I start another story or exchange knowing glances with others when I go on for too long. At school, where everyone has something to say, I constantly feel like my words are just background noise — too much, too often, too easily ignored.
One night, during a friendsgiving dinner, I declared my love for knowing. I exclaimed that “If I were to be cursed with something, let it be with knowing everything.” I’ve always loved learning. I love collecting facts, analyzing stories and piecing together ideas until they mesh into something bigger. My mind is constantly turning, filled with questions and theories. And talking is how I make sense of it all.
I told myself that I don’t just talk for the sake of hearing my own voice — I talk because I want to share what I’ve learned, to connect with people through ideas and stories. To me, knowledge is meant to be passed around, expanded upon and debated. But when my excitement spills over, when I speak too fast or too much, I can feel the patience of the room thinning. I feel my enthusiasm being mistaken for overbearingness.
But as the days go by and I talk more and more, I’ve realized that my love for talking has lessened my ability to listen. I’ve become so focused on expressing myself that I’ve forgotten that understanding requires absorbing ideas, not just voicing my own. The more I talk, the more I find myself missing the perspectives of others, and I realize how often I’ve failed to let them speak in the same way I long to be heard.
Sometimes, the wind whispers back. I’ve forgotten that wanting to learn means listening as much as, if not more than, talking. To truly understand someone else’s perspective, I have to be willing to hear it. As learners, the facts and ideas that we collect to understand are shaped by the voices around us. Without listening to those voices, we only have half the picture.
“So, tell me about your day,” I asked my best friend. And she told me, without hesitation. She told me about her classes, the professor who always lost his train of thought and the Brody barista who remembered her order. She even mentioned the book that she was reading, how she found herself lost in the words and a world that she made hers, and I felt something shift. I wasn’t just waiting for my turn to respond or searching for a way to relate her experiences back to mine. I was just listening.
And in that moment, I understood what I had been missing. Talking had always been my way of connecting, sharing and making myself known. But listening was another kind of knowing. It was understanding not just what someone was saying, but also what they meant and felt. It was realizing that silence didn’t always need to be filled, that sometimes, the most important thing I could do was let someone else’s words take up space.
The wind and I have always had one-sided conversations, but maybe its silence has been trying to tell me something all along. Maybe, just like I pour my thoughts into it, it carries back stories I’ve never stopped long enough to hear. Maybe, all this time, the wind has been whispering. Not to remind me that I love to talk, but to teach me how to listen.
Kaylee Nguyen is a freshman from Pensacola, Fla. studying Molecular & Cellular Biology and Writing Seminars. Her column tackles how creativity connects with identity as she hopes to connect with others through shared experiences and the universal love for learning.
