Listening deeply and properly is damned difficult for most of us. On the surface the concept of it seems simple enough. All listening requires of us is to be quiet and focus on the person doing the speaking. The sad truth is most of us have a false perception of how good we are at it.
The real problem trouble is how easy it is to “get into the weeds” when we’re communicating with others. While in a conversation our minds race and attention is fractured. We interrupt the person we’re conversing with to echo back similar/relatable stories, or we try to come up with solutions to solve their problem(s) for them. After all, we’re just trying to be empathetic and helpful…right?
In truth, when we’re doing all this stuff mentioned above we’re not really listening at all.
I’ve been stumbling around on this planet for over five decades and I feel like I’m just beginning to learn how to practice this vital art that binds us to our fellow humans. I realized I was way worse at listening than I thought and being an indie author didn’t help me at all. To be successful in this very tough profession, it’s necessary to shed your shell and relentlessly self-promote. This has helped me in many ways but, on the downside, it's caused me to develop horrible listening habits. For almost three decades I focused on selling almost everyone I met on my work. I was also raised to be a problem solver so, when it comes to listening, that’s another huge strike against me.
The stars somehow came into alignment this summer. My career has reached a point where I don’t need to focus as much on self-promotion anymore (Yay!). Since taking a step back, truly observing the world, and beginning to make a real attempt to listen deeply I’ve realized what a tragically ironic and lonely time it is we live in.
Since I’m not interjecting myself into conversations as much anymore I’ve begun to notice how rare it is that people give me even a small sliver of their full attention. Now, I’m not talking about “listening” while they glance at their phone notifications, check their weather app, or bang out a quick response to an email but the “full-on eye contact, doing nothing else” kind of listening. Sadly, I discovered it’s very rare. On occasion, when I notice someone’s mind is really “elsewhere” I simply stop talking and it can be astonishing how long it takes people to recognize the silence.
Being committed to learning this skill has been a process that’s required a lot of patience on my part, biting of the tongue, and shifting in my chair. Yesterday, while getting a haircut, I believe I had a breakthrough. I sat in the chair with my trap shut, saying very little, and just listened. You know what? It felt wonderful, it was a beautiful experience. As an added bonus it was far less stressful on my end to just sit there and take it all in instead of trying to think of those relatable stories or relay some “life changing” advice.
Feeling that you're "truly heard" is incredibly soothing and therapeutic. People pay hundreds of dollars to sit in a room with a licensed psychotherapist who, largely, just sits there and listens. But I never imagined how rewarding it can be to truly listen.
Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” We all talk about how divisive and dysfunctional our world is right now.
What if the answer has been right there in front of us all along?
What if all it is we really need to do is listen?
~Eric Vance Walton~
Thanks for reading! All for now. Trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.
(Gif sourced from Giphy.com.)
Poetry should move us, it should change us, it should glitch our brains, shift our moods to another frequency. Poetry should evoke feelings of melancholy, whimsy, it should remind us what it feels like to be in love, or cause us to think about something in a completely different way. I view poetry, and all art really, as a temporary and fragile bridge between our world and a more pure and refined one. This is a world we could bring into creation if enough of us believed in it. This book is ephemera, destined to end up forgotten, lingering on some dusty shelf or tucked away in a dark attic. Yet the words, they will live on in memory. I hope these words become a part of you, bubble up into your memory when you least expect them to and make you feel a little more alive.
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