"I like to listen. I have
learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."
--Ernest Hemingway
I’ve come to learn
that listening is an art. Like any
art form, you have to practice it consistently to have any ability to
do the skill well. When I was five
years old, I decided piano was a good instrument choice for me, and my parents
came along side my decision by saying that if I wanted to take part in learning the
piano, I had to take part in committing myself to a long term agreement of
training and practice. In retrospect, I’m glad I had parents that made me
follow through, because now the piano, after all those grueling childhood
hours, is not only my therapy but also my joy. The same goes for listening, it takes daily practice and
longevity to train your ear for a full 100% engagement mode. And you have to train your ear to not
only hear the words that are being sent through the air, but actually hear
their tone, their meaning, their depth, their purpose and their truth.
We treat things so
frivolously in our culture. We don’t question the ins and outs of our world, we
just take words at face value when there are so many levels and shelves of
information that we are handed daily. Not only is that information glaring at us, but our doors are shut
to hear that information, greatest reason being that we are mostly consumed
with ourselves.
We’ve all talked to
people that are not present in a conversation. Frustrating isn’t it? We’ve all energetically tried to engage
with that one on the other side of the receiver who is obviously disctracted.
We’ve all repeated something for the 40th time wondering where the
listener was the last 39. We’ve
all become drained trying to get in a word edgewise to the one whose mouth is
the only thing that functional. Truthfully, it gets exhausting.
“Be still” is a reference
the Bible uses that most Americans could not comfortably exercise. The ability to stop, be silent, sit
quietly, let your mind rest, take captive your thoughts, no music, no TV, no
this-activity or that-activity, no unnecessary stimuli, just stillness. In that
place of utter solitude, if you listen, you begin to hear. And the greatest
voice will rise up to speak to you: your heart. It will begin to tell you
things that it doesn’t normally get to say…it will begin to share truths that
you normally don’t pay mind to, it will begin to confide secrets that you may
not know, it will finally have it’s chance to be vulnerable and honest and
heard. But, you have to listen.
The same goes for your
neighbor—the one who sits across from you in whatever circumstance. You have to take that divine moment
with that individual and create a place of stillness. To do so you will need to
put yourself away, you will have to let your needs and your thoughts rest on
the sideline as you welcome the words and thoughts of another. In this place of welcoming you
listen, letting grace and mercy be the landing pad of their words, letting good
reason allow you to filter these formed sentences into levels of depth and
meaning. As you practice this, you will soon begin to not only hear the words
of another person, but you will soon begin to actually hear their heart—the trueness
of who they really are…the most delicate piece of them that they most want you
to know.
Listening is an art
form, but you have to practice, so you can joy in the beauty of someone else's words.
