I would like to write about the great and powerful of Listening and how we forget about it. How we do not listen to our parents or those whom we dearly love. Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.
Just think how the friends whom really listen to us are the ones we move toward. This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life! You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. That is the principle of it. It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. If you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good.
Who are the people whom you will go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you will then know what to do about it yourself. When we listen to people there is an alternating current that recharges us so we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created. Don't you think so?
There are also some brilliant people who cannot listen much. They have no ingoing wires on their apparatus. They are entertaining, but exhausting, too. I think this is because these lecturers, these brilliant performers, by not giving us a chance to talk, do not let this little creative fountain inside us begin to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. That is why, when someone has listened to you, you go home rested and lighthearted. Have you ever experience that before?
When people listen, creative waters flow within us. This little creative fountain is in us all. It is the spirit, or the intelligence, or the imagination or whatever you want to call it. If you are very tired, strained, have no solitude, run too many errunds, talk to too many people, drink too many cocktails, this little fountain is muddied over and covered with a lot of debris. The result is you stop living from the center, the creative fountain, and you live from the periphery, from externals. That is, you go along on mere willpower without imagination.
It is when people really listen to us, with quiet, fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way. I discovered all this about two years ago when a good friend of mine, pointed out the weakness in me, that is I never listen. It truly made a revolutionary change in my life. Before that, when I went to a party or somewhere, I would think anxiously: "Now try hard. Be lively. Be happy. Say bright things. Talk. " Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk; to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject.
Of course, sometimes, I cannot listen as well as others. When I have this listening power, people crowd around and their heads keep turning to me as though irresistibly pulled. By listening, I have started up their creative fountain. I do them pretty good, I guess....
Now, why does it do them good? I have a kind of mystical notion about this. I think it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. It is so in writing. You are taught in school to put down on paper only the bright things. Wrong. Pour out the dull things on paper too - you can tear them up afterward - for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.
I think women have this listening faculty more than men. It is not the fault of men. They lose it because of their long habit of striving in business, of self-assertion. The more forceful men are, the less they can listen as they grow older. That is why women in general are more fun than men, more restful and inspiriting. Now, this non-listening of able men is the cause of one of the saddest things in the world - the loneliness of fathers, of those quietly sad men who move along with their grown children like remote ghosts.
For just as the tragedy of parents and children are not listening, so it is with husbands and wives. If they disagree they will begin to shout louder and louder - if not actually, at least inwardly - hanging fiercely and deafly onto their own ideas, instead of listening and becoming quieter and more comprehending.
The most serious result of not listening is that worst thing in the world, boredom; for it is really the death of love. It seals people off from each other more than any other thing.
How to listen? It is harder than you think. Maybe I could give some suggestions: Try to learn tranquility, to live in the present a part of the time every day....it helps a lot, trust me. Sometimes say to yourself: "Now. What is happening now? This friend is talking. I am quiet. There is endless time. I hear it, every word." Then suddenly you begin to hear not only what people are saying, but also what they are trying to say, and you sense the whole truth about them. Watch also, your self-assertiveness. Give it up! Remember, it is not enough just to listen to people. One must really listen, only then does the magic begin.
We should all know this: that listening is not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. A true listener is much more beloved and he is more effective and learns more and does more good. So try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and even to those who do not, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle, perhaps a great one!
No comments:
Post a Comment