Listen

Listen

 

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
― Stephen R. Covey

 

I’m learning a lot in my work at the counseling center and in grad school.  One of the skills that is critical for therapists is the art of listening.  I did not have this skill before counseling, but ironically I didn’t start to hone it at the center, I started to hone it in recovery.

There is something to be said for sitting in meetings and listening to others who have gone before you and not speaking for a while.  In my home group we have a group conscience that states that if you haven’t done certain steps yet, then you can’t share at the meeting.  It is a humbling and sometimes frustrating experience to sit and listen for months while you plod your way through intense self-reflective work before you can share with the group, but there is a reason for it and that is how I learned to listen.

I don’t often talk about politics.  I don’t talk about politics because it has proven so weighted and triggering that nothing seems to get accomplished except heated arguments among my friends.  Maybe that makes me too sensitive and some will say it makes me weak but I have mostly chosen to have conversations with my friends face-to-face and listen.

I know for my part in November I was naïve.  I was shocked at the election and thought that more people would vote as I did and was dizzy at the result.  I found, to my surprise, that I knew a lot of people who did not vote as I did and was close to many of them.  There was a lot of angry rhetoric out there and still is and I have mostly stood back and surveyed the landscape wondering how I can help bridge the gap in some small way.  I want to understand more than anything else because half the country felt disenfranchised before the election and now the other half does so at some point it seems we have to stop railing at each other and start trying to understand where we see eye-to-eye and start building from there.

A friend of mine was venting to me the other day that he was frustrated with two of his friends because they did not vote as he did and he was getting ready to shut them off altogether because of it.  He said that when they spoke of politics it got very heated and he would bring up points he felt were un-refutable and they would always have a counter-argument which seemed to infuriate him.  I asked him if he ever really listened to them.  He somewhat angrily asked me what I meant by that.  I said, “Well, when you are having these debates with them are you really listening to them or are you actually thinking in your head of what you want to say in response to prove your own point?”  He proclaimed that of course he was listening but I had my doubts because he had cut me off twice in the course of my own sentence.

I have had some incredible conversations with friends over the past several months who I honestly thought I would not agree with on anything political, only to find we have more common ground than not.  I made a decision going into those conversations that I was going to be open-minded and listen without judgement or pre-formulated responses and I was lucky enough that they have done the same.  Respect-filled, perspective-shifting talks ensued and though we certainly haven’t solved the world’s problems, we have moved inches towards a greater understanding on some small level.

Imagine of Washington D.C. tried doing that today.  Imagine if we all tried doing that today.