Day 10
When a black person is murdered, one of the resounding calls to action that we hear from one another is to listen. Just listen. Sit down and listen. It’s all over social media and in every conversation on allyship and advocacy. Listen to black people is the instruction. Listen to black women. Listen to black queer folks. And, when I reflect on my own practice of listening, I just think, damn, I wish someone had taught me how to listen. What does that even mean? What does it look like? How does the room feel when someone is truly being listened to?
Merriam-Webster describes listening, first, as the act of “[paying] attention to sound.” And “to hear something with thoughtful attention: give consideration.”
I used to think of myself as a great listener. I would be affirmed to this effect, often. People telling me that they felt seen and heard and understood by me. Maybe I was, by their standards. And by my own, at the time. But I don’t think of myself as a good listener anymore. Listening, for me, is an entirely new practice. And one I struggle with every single day. One of my biggest hangups with listening is that I am a fixer. I am deeply codependent: I don’t like experiencing or sitting with the anxieties of others, because I have the tendency to take them on. And, really, it matters very little if whatever is going on actually impacts me or not. I take it on as if it were my own. And, because I don’t like the way it feels, I will try to fix things. To fix the problem. To fix the person. So that I don’t have to feel discomfort anymore.
You can imagine, then, that while this person is sharing with me, very little listening is actually occurring. I am not giving thoughtful consideration. I am not offering my attention to the subject at hand. Instead, I am planning and coordinating and organizing. This problem will be fixed. And I will fix it. Very rarely do I think to ask, do you want my thoughts here, or would you like me to simply listen? Instead, they finish their thought, or take a deep breath, and I am launching into all the ways I know this thing can be fixed. Most people I have done this to have simply allowed me to go on like this. But it was one person in particular who pointed out this tendency of mine. You know, I don’t need you to fix what’s going on for me. I just want you to listen. I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t.
There are many positions that we can take under the guise of listening: We can be fixers (failing to offer attention because we are so distracted by our plans to make everything comfortable and okay). We can be the distractor (the “good vibes only” type - avoiding what’s being said and pointing to all that’s good in the world as a way to, we think, offer “perspective”). We can suck the air out of the room (taking up so much space with our own feelings about the situation, that we forget to offer our attention to what the other person is sharing). We can compare (constantly feeling compelled to share all the ways that we, too, have experienced what this person is experiencing). These are just a few of the ways I have shown up to “listen,” anyways.
There are a million ways we can arrive to the table when another person asks us to listen. And most of them fall well short of what was being asked of us in the first place. To be present. To offer the gift of attention. Without judgment or trying to force the situation to be something it is not. Listening requires something like surrender, I think: yielding the illusion of control over another person, their thoughts, and their circumstances. And doing the hard work to simply be present, instead.
A Practice for Today:
What has the world taught you about listening? What does it look like? How does the room feel when someone is being listened to? What makes someone a “good listener”? Are you a “good listener”?
Today, I invite you to give some attention to the ways you listen. When someone is sharing with you, what do you observe about your instincts? Do you want to fix the situation? Do you feel compelled to offer advice? What kind of listener are you?
