Listen Up, People! The Art of Listening & The Myth of the Listening Machine

“Everybody’s talkin’ at me,

but I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’”

Yeah, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about listening. It’s what I do, pretty much. And I’ve been thinking about it from both sides—the listener, and the person being listened to.

And the wonderfulness of listening to someone who’s full of life and joy and ideas and is shooting sparks of creativity with every word.

And the responsibility of listening to someone whose life isn’t quite so joyous.

Listening well isn’t easy. Talk is way, way easier than listening, if you’re doing the latter the way it should be done.

And I’ve been thinking about what it means to listen, and what it means to have someone listen to you, and the responsibilities of both parties, as well as the expectations and false beliefs. Come along with me~~

Remember—I’ve told y’all this many times, I’m sure—about the time I met a woman who had had suffered the worst thing ever? I knew I was going to meet her, and I sat in my car in the parking lot writing in my notebook and preparing to listen.

And then, almost every day for the next year, I listened some more. She talked. I listened.

This is the kind of listening I mean:  when you open yourself up wide and take in what the person is telling you. You don’t interrupt. You don’t make hurry-up noises. You don’t form opinions. You just listen. Wide open. Their words take you into their life.

I used to lie on my back on the floor while she talked to me on the phone, my arms and legs out at my sides, wide open. Listening. Sometimes crying, silently.

It’s not easy. We’re not taught to do it. We learn that “listening” means waiting, with some little degree of polite patience, for the other person to finish talking so we can say something. Sometimes we’re excited to say something because something they’ve said has struck us and we want to respond. Sometimes we’re just waiting to talk about ourselves. Sometimes we want to bring the conversation around to a better topic—something more comfortable, or fresher, or less depressing. Most of the time, we’re forming our response in our heads while they’re talking, mentally tapping our foot:  “Come on, come on, wind it up already!”

The exceptions are:  when we’re trying to learn something (lectures, lessons), when we’re hearing something juicy (gossip, news), and when we’re in love (hanging on every sugared word).  The kind of listening we sometimes do for loved ones. There are other exceptions, sure—which is what, of course, proves the rule, as exceptions always do.

Sometimes it’s invaluable to have someone listen to you. In the above case, it was. She had a horrible, horrible burden and needed to share it. It wasn’t something most people could hear without flinching and turning away. She couldn’t talk on and on about it to her family or her co-workers or friends.

Sometimes, as above, the role of listener is something you take on willingly. You know it’s something you can do for someone else, and you do it the best you can.

This should always be the case, you think? I disagree:  listening this intently is exhausting. If we did it all the time, in every conversation, we would be completely worn out.

Because, it turns out, listening well is not passive. It’s a very active thing, and it requires concentration of a singular sort.

I prepared to meet and listen to this woman the way I prepare to listen to someone when I interview them. It works as well for listening to a lecture or having a serious conversation with your partner. It helps if you meditate regularly—really! I’m serious:  regular meditation helps you learn to control your mind and keep it from racing all over the place. You know:  you’re listening to someone talk about their bunion surgery, but you’re thinking about whether you’re going to have to install a new garbage dispose-all. So here’s some stuff I’ve learned.

Here’s how you can prepare to listen, say, if you’re going to have coffee with a friend who is having A Crisis of whatever kind.

--Take time to relax before you meet. This is important. It’s hard to listen when you’re stressed, rushing around, multi-tasking right up until the minute you sit down at the table, look at your watch, and go, “OK, so tell me. . . .”

--Prepare by reviewing. When I was getting ready to meet the woman, above, I re-read the newspaper accounts. When I’m getting ready to talk to an artist, I read whatever information they’ve sent me, read their blog, look at their website. I focus on what they’ve said and what they’re doing, not on what I’m going to say to them or what I’m going to do with the information. I don’t have a list of questions—then I would have an agenda, and having an agenda is the opposite of Open Listening. I think of it as an opportunity to be taken into another world. If you listen closely enough, it’s like entering another life. In the above case, it’s scary and sad. In the case of the artists I listen to, it’s an amazingly wonderful thing, seeing what they do from the inside. (If the person I’m listening to is a particularly good story teller, listening and entering their world is fabulous, like I’d imagine it would be with a hit of some really good drug that takes you out of yourself and into another, magical place. There is nothing like a really good story teller, period. I know some.)

--Sit down facing them and relax. Lean forward and make as much eye contact as feels comfortable. You know posture affects mood. If you sit with your arms and legs crossed, you’re in a posture of protection, which is the opposite of being open.

--And then just listen. You can tell when they need you to nod in agreement, or when they hope for a chuckle or a sigh. If you’re paying attention, you’ll know when to ask questions or to re-state what they’re telling you to make sure you’re understanding them. But you may not need to do that at all.

And here’s what not to do:

--Don’t fidget. Lord, do NOT fidget! If someone is telling you Important Things, the last thing you want to do is to appear bored and eager for them to get it over with so you can go buy shampoo.

--Don’t interrupt. Duh.

--Don’t look at your watch or your cell. Do not answer your phone or sneak a peek for texts.

--Do not go, “Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.” When did people start doing this, anyway? And why does everyone do it? People seem to think, when they’re saying it, that it means, “Yeah, I get you, I understand you.” But what it says is, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, heard it all, get on with it, I’m too busy to listen to this.” Bank tellers, people at the post office and the grocery store—it’s like a national tic or something.

--Do not make comments. You know, “Everything will be OK,” “You’ll feel better tomorrow,” “That happened to me, too.” Just listen.

So there’re some steps to being a good listener. But what about if you’re on the other side? What if you’re the one being listened to? Do you realize what a gift you’re being given? If you practice this open listening, you’ll realize how demanding it is, and you should realize, then, that when someone does it for you, they really are giving you a gift. Don’t take advantage of it.

How would you do that? Ahh. Turns out I have some advice there, too. Since I do listen, I have often found myself in the position of The Listening Machine. I’m not sure why I let myself do this, as I know from experience what will happen. It stems in part from my need to be useful and solve people’s problems. Perhaps it also comes from some desire to prove that I can, too, make friends. Whatever the reason, it happens, and I’m still learning how to avoid this, because there IS no Listening Machine, not unless you have a therapist and are paying them to listen to you. Because guess what? They are trained for that, for the work and the stress of listening over and over to other people’s troubles.

Regular lay people are not.

In the above example, after a year of almost daily listening, I said something during a conversation about something going on in my own life. And the woman skipped right over it and asked me to do her a favor. As if I hadn’t said a word.

You know:  you have a friend who has all this stuff going on, and you listen to her talk about her husband and her kids and her job, on and on and on. You’re a great listener for her, and she appreciates it—she says you’re wonderful at this. And then one day you mention something about your own life, some worry or problem or some joy or excitement. You say, “I’ve got this huge report due at the end of the week.”

She says, “Little Billy made two goals in soccer on Saturday.” Just like that, not missing a beat, as if there hasn’t even been a squeak in the machinery of The Listening Machine.

It happens. Usually the person being listened to doesn’t even realize how rude they’ve been. They’ve become so used to talking, talking, talking—unburdening themselves of all their problems—that your comments about your own life don’t even register.

Or: you’ve been listening to someone for months, someone obsessing about some on-going problem (hint:  often has to do with the words “job” and “boss”), and suddenly you can’t do it any more. You’re overwhelmed. Her problems have begun to seem like your own. Her stories take you back to your own worst job ever, and you start to have headaches just like you did then.

It’s like the time I told you about when the woman came up to me and started talking about her mother having been in the hospital, not too long after my mother had died. She knew about this, and it seemed to her to be a good reason to talk about her own mother’s recent illness in great detail. And I had to say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to talk about this.” Because everything she said brought up painful memories, and no matter how much she might have needed to talk to someone about her mother, I could not be that person. There are times you have to say, “I’m sorry, but we’re not going to discuss this any more.”

Then you know it’s time to change things, to ease away, or to tell your friend it’s time for her to go for career counseling or just quit the damn job already or something besides talking to you about it. Everyone can’t listen, and people who can listen can’t do it for everyone all the time.

If you’re lucky enough to have someone really listen to you, here’s what you need to do:

--Ask them if they can make time to sit and listen to you. Set a time for this; don’t catch them when they have 15 minutes before they need to do something else and then put them in the position of having to say to you, after you’ve talked for an hour, that they reallyreallyreally have to go home and take the roast out of the oven, never mind that it’s a charred ruin already.

--Do not put all your burdens on one person. You cannot expect another human being to listen to all your myriad woes over and over and over. The only person who can do that is a therapist. Try to find more than just the one person to talk to, kind of like tag team listening.

--And if you find yourself relying on your listener, depending on them to listen to you every day for weeks and months—then it’s really time to think about finding that therapist. It’s too much to ask a lay person to take in all that pain or uncertainty and worry or obsessing day after day.

--Don’t ever forget that there is no Listening Machine. The person giving you the gift of listening is still a human being, with a life and cares and joys and concerns of their own. When you begin to think of them as just a receptacle for your talk, you’re turning them into a Listening Machine, and those don’t exist. Listening is a two-way street. You may think your life is the one that’s important, that your concerns are so important that your listener cares as much about hearing them as you do about talking about them, but this is never the case:  no one cares as much about your life as you do.

Not unless they’re some kind of stalker, they don’t.

So: really open listening is a gift. It should be treated as a gift. If you’re capable of offering it, this is a wonderful thing to do for someone. If you are the one being given the gift, don’t take it for granted, and don’t abuse the kindness of the gift. Never forget that your listener is a human just like you, and their lives are as important to them as yours is to you.

Cultivate the habit of open listening, but offer the gift of it with care. Practice it in good ways:  when you meet someone with an interesting story to tell you; you’ll enjoy it ever so much more than if you were sitting there, halfway listening, trying to think of a story of your own to offer in return.

And if you practice and then you get a chance to listen to a poet or an artist or a really good story teller talk about their life and what they do? You’ll be able to open your arms and your ears and be prepared for pure magic.