Listening

“It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

A teacher once asked his class to solve the following problem:

‘Ramu worked at a butcher’s shop. His height was 5 feet, 6 inches. His waist was 36 inches. He worked 10 hours a day and earned 50 rupees per day. What did he weigh?’

 

Everyone started calculating Ramu’s weight by multiplying, dividing, adding, subtracting and finding relation between all the digits. Then a guy stood up and said, “Sir, he weighed meat.”

 

“Ahhhh!” We all sighed. The question was not ‘what was his weight’, it was ‘what did he weigh’!

Effective listening, a more active form of listening, is a process that goes beyond simply hearing. While you hear with your ears, you listen with your entire body, including your ears, eyes, heart and brain. It has to do with the other person’s words, tonality and body language – how the words are spoken and in the context in which you know the one speaking those words. In the words of Valarie Kaur, “Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear.”

Not being heard is today a rampant problem. We no longer communicate to be heard or understood, thanks to social media. We rarely find the right words and the correct intonation, thanks to emojis. Sadly, we have a whole generation of people that speak and write in unintelligible short forms and gibberish that is making it very hard for the rest of us to make out what they are saying. And there begins they cycle of communication breakdown.

But a more endemic issue is the problem of not listening to our own selves. What thoughts keep coming up in your mind and are you listening to them or pushing them away? Do you know the voice of your intuition or even your conscience anymore? Is there a gentle warning system within you that sometimes tugs at your heart or did that get banished ages ago? Are you in the habit of turning things over in your mind before saying them out loud or is putting your foot in your mouth a favourite pass time?

Listening, really listening is a skill that is fast becoming extinct. And with it comes the epidemic of not being heard. For every instance of not being heard, there is an internal frustration that wells up. We are experiencing the consequences of that collective frustration as a society and they are devastating. But as an individual, my responsibility is to first listen to myself. Clarify what it is I am saying to myself and be able to articulate it. Journaling has been a great help for me in this. Then build a vocabulary that clearly articulates your needs and use it with the right people – people who can actually help you find what you need or want. A rant on social media to all and sundry will not help your case and neither will a bunch of ‘xoxo’ sent on Whatsapp.

This week, listen. Really listen. And when you communicate, make it easy for others to listen to you.

“What do I keep coming back to? What is that telling me?” ~ James Clear