Willa's Journal - Listen with your heart

Sleeping Goddess

Listen with your heart wide-open.

One of the hardest things to do successfully is to listen.

I'm pretty good at listening to other people most of the time. It's one of my better qualities, as long as they don't figure out that I'm listening in lieu of speaking for myself. I'm pretty good at active listening, that is, I don't just sit there like a lump, I do express interest and animation, and I am interested. Especially when it's a friend, someone I love, I'm extremely interested in what they have to say, in knowing them better, in taking the friendship deeper. If it's someone that I don't particularly care about, it's harder. Well, I say that, but actually it's probably easier.

It's harder to appear to be interested, maybe, if all I'm wishing is that they'd go away and leave me alone. But easier in that I don't have to absorb what they're saying, I only have to hear it at a surface level, and once the conversation is over, I don't have to retain it. So yes, easier.

I know someone who always has a hundred different things going on in his mind. You can tell him something, and no matter whether he answers you or not, whether he nods and says, "Yes, yes," or whether he completely ignores you, you know he didn't hear. But he realizes this about himself. He knows that he doesn't listen, and he readily admits it. He says, "I wasn't really listening when you told me that before, because I knew you'd tell me again." And since he doesn't listen, he doesn't expect anyone else to listen. When he has something important to pass on to someone else, something he really wants them to hear, he says, "Did you look him in the eye and make sure he heard you? Was he really listening?"

Then there are the people who talk all the time, who never seem to listen, who can't abide a moment's silence, but have to fill it with something, anything. All I have to do when I'm with those people is nod, and smile, and interject a token comment here and there. It's hard to imagine that somewhere among all that chatter might be a pearl of wisdom. Or that there might be an unhappy soul that really needs someone to listen. Sometimes it's too much work to glean the important stuff out of such a one-sided "conversation." But still, I must listen with some part of my being, or at least hear, if not listen, because it's all in there, somewhere, waiting to be brought out when prompted.

The hardest part, sometimes, is listening to myself.

My head knows what I ought to do, my heart knows what I need to do, it's just hard, sometimes, getting them in synch and actually doing anything.

Sometimes just listening is enough. When you're listening to a friend who is troubled, who needs to unburden himself and simply needs someone to listen, just being there is enough. Being there, of course, with an open heart and really listening, not waiting for him to finish so you can interject your own opinions, and not offering any solutions or answers, just listening.

Or when you're trying to learn something, when you're in a class or a seminar, attempting to absorb some new knowledge or polish what you already know, sometimes it's best to just sit back and listen. In the past, I've found myself stuck on a certain point, and trying to formulate a question in my mind. In my attempt to clarify my question so that it sounds intelligent, but yet conveys the fact that I'm not sure I understand what's being said, but of course if it was explained better, I would, I'm sure I missed the very answer to that question. Give things a chance to become clear. Don't rush in to try to ask a question without waiting for the answer first.

The place where I need to do more active listening is within myself. My friends can tell me over and over again that I'm capable of doing something, that I'm capable of doing more. They can urge me and encourage me and support me, and I can listen to them, and want to believe them, but where I really need to hear it is in my own heart. Not that I don't believe them, just that I need to convince myself, as well. And that takes some strong listening. Because the answer is there, I really do know it is, if I would only listen.

I will help you grow and you will help
me grow. I won't need you to behave
in a certain way to make my ego feel
comfortable. And you will not make me
behave in a certain way to satisfy your ego. I
won't make you be anyone you're not.
And I will love you for who
you are. I will tell you the truth.

~ Nancy Slonim Aronie, "Writing from the Heart"