Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-10-16 - 11:09 a.m.

Listening

Shhhhhhhh....

I've been told I'm a good listener. I think I am. I do it because I think it's important. Listening is a way to get new ideas in, to shake up my thinking. It's also one of the purest forms of respect. It's so little to offer another person: your attention. We all need attention, not in the look-at-me-I'm-a-clown way (although we need that too) but in a way that tells us we are valuable, interesting people, with things to say that count.

I don't think listening is second nature. I think we have to teach it to ourselves, and remind ourselves regularly. What we're thinking, what we're saying, our opinions and ideas and stories and solutions seem SO important to us, it's easy to steamroll another person with them. It's even easy to look like we're listening when we've really only pasted that look on our faces while our minds whirl on through our own private thoughts.

I'm guilty of that with my older daughter right now. I WANT to listen to her, I want to honor the fact that she talks to me - and oh, how she can talk - but I can't stick with it very long. I zone. I know I'll be sorry when the day comes that I ask her how school was and she says, "Okay." I'll miss the days when I could see her mouth start to move before she got the car door open. But it isn't easy to stick with it, to shut out my own agenda and really let what she's saying in. It's also not easy to be patient when she discards all rules of chronology and clarity, and I end up exasperated: "What the hell are you talking about? Gimme a clue here, girl!" But at least if I'm confused, I'm trying to make sense out of what she's saying. Even that's better than zoning.

BF was over last night and he was NOT in a listening mood. He had a lot to say about his workday, which went in to his work history and the history of computers and MUDs in general, which went into communication theory and his methods of musical composition. All of which was interesting, but -- okay, no. Not all of it was, but a lot of it was. All of it MIGHT have been, but after a while of not being able to get a word in edgewise I got hurt and angry, and then it wasn't interesting because I was more interested in my own hurt and angry thoughts. Not being heard made me more self-absorbed. If you won't listen to me, fine - I'LL listen to me. Ha - that really fixed YOUR little red wagon, didn't it?

He knows he isn't a good listener, and he's asked that I kind of grab him by the collar and get his attention - kind of a version of what my mother used to tell me you had to do with mules - but I'm petty about that. Frankly, a great deal of what I have to say doesn't feel important enough to treat that way - but I want you to listen anyway. If I slap you upside the head and say, "This is BIG, this is IMPORTANT, I want your ATTENTION," then I don't feel very good about following with, "I noticed that winter squash is coming in at the grocery now."

I did want to talk about my day, in an aimless chatter sort of way. I had things I was proud of doing and things that were troubling me and things that I noticed and things I wondered about. None of it was earthshaking - it seldom is. But I wanted to say it, and I didn't want him to let me get one sentence out and interrupt with, "Oh yeah - that reminds of me of when I..."

I'm trying to teach my kids to listen. "Respectful attention," I told them at preschool, and I still tell them now. It's the biggest gift you can give each other, I say. I try to give it to them as much as I can. I wish I were better at it, but I'm happy that I'm conscious of it and trying, anyway. I get so much back, for listening. I hear my kids say such wonderful things. I learn about other people. I get new ways to look at things. And I find out that the winter squash is in.

I suppose this writing is a way of talking without interruption, of doing that idle chatter. Sometimes you answer me with your own thoughts, in my guestbook or e-mail; sometimes you don't. Sometimes you just listen and go quietly away, and then you come back another time - or you don't. Maybe you really read this or maybe you just skimmed it, with your mind on how you were going to fit your errands in after work. It doesn't matter, I guess - you let me get this whole train of though out without stopping me and saying, "Yeah, yeah. Hey, did you watch the news this morning?" Thank you, for that. By the way, Long's stays open until six, but they don't carry winter squash there; try Albertson's next door.

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