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The last time someone told you one of their parents had died, did you offer your condolences, a cake, and then tell them about how you felt when you lost yours?
When a friend calls up to complain about the intense agony brought on by all encounters with his boss, do you jump in with your own workplace misery?
Or – and this one never fails – if you’re offering a shoulder to cry on when there’s been a romantic disappointment, how long do you wait before you talk about your own heartbreak?
Nothing wrong with any of these scenarios, is there? You’re offering support, solidarity through comparison, compassion in sharing. That is what you’re doing, isn’t it?
You’re not. You’re not doing anything except interrupting someone who just wants you to listen to them.
I don’t think a day goes by that does not find me failing to listen.
The inability to be a committed listener seems to be something we develop early and as we grow it gets worse. When you were growing up, did you think your parents really listened to you? Do you think they thought you listened to them?
The ways in which we fail at listening and fail to listen are legion, and yet we don’t seem all that interested in changing. Relationship counsellors say most of what they hear from their clients is that they don’t feel heard.
If we don’t understand this, all is lost. Because this is something I think we all know on some level. Partners, colleagues, family, friends, bank clerks, hairdressers, teachers, nation leaders and world leaders – do any of them listen to us?
But then, do we listen to them?
One of the reasons we can’t listen to others is because we’re really just biding our time until they stop talking so we can say our bit. We recognise how essential it is for our voices to command space, but not why our silence and attention might be more important.
Think about anyone you’ve known who is deeply beloved in their orbit. A boss you’ll go the extra mile for. An aunt you always have time for. A priest everyone says is the best the church has ever had. What tends to make them special is the attention they pay to the people they interact with.
Most of us are so distracted by what we want to say we can’t focus on the other speaker. We desperately (and a bit pathetically, really) need to be right – to come to the right conclusion or to get to the salient point first – so there’s no room to focus on what someone else is saying.
If this isn’t at the core of most arguments I don’t know what is.
This is not just your problem or the problem with a few people you know, this is a world problem. This is a mental health problem.
The first time I told someone that our listening problem had an impact on mental wellbeing his eyebrows became animated in a way that would have impressed Jim Henson. Or mimes.
But it does. It does. (Stomp, stomp, shriek, shriek).
You are depressed and you find someone to talk to. They listen and don’t interrupt. They do not judge or express horror. They wait for you to find your words. At the end, maybe all they can say is that they’re sorry about what you’re going through. Maybe they can remind you of something you said that leaves room for a bit of hope.
That person heard you. For a while, you were not alone. Maybe, because they were deliberate in their attention, they won’t expect you to be better right away. Maybe they actually tried to understand.
Let’s stretch this all the way: children who have been hurt need safe people to talk to and trust; older people who can’t seem to hold on to one thought for too long need help making sense of what they are trying to remember; people who actually have real problems expressing themselves need extra patience and maybe some riddle-solving.
In TT, we don’t have nearly enough support groups, help lines and clinicians with enough time. This is probably true in most places. This means we can’t even join a group or pay someone to listen to us.
So we have to get better at doing it for each other. Because we all need someone to listen to our painful, uncomfortable truths. We have to be willing to not interrupt someone else’s words because we imagine ours are more important. We have to be willing to accept, without judgment, what someone is ready to say.
If we don’t, we’ll never understand anything.
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