Listening from the Heart

 

Why is it that people don’t really listen to each other?  Oh, they hear one another, but not what’s lying between the lines and under the words, not the emotional content, not the things – unconsciously hidden or not – that the other is saying, not the “where is this coming from?” question we should all ask when someone else is speaking to us.

Not all conversations are fraught with emotional content, but all are driven by who the other person really is.

People often just want to have the “last word.” Or they want to prove their superior knowledge of the subject.  Or even humiliate their interlocutor with a “grand slam.”  Some simply reply with an irrelevant acknowledgement that words have been heard, if not really understood.

I have often wondered at the failure of communications between people, especially in personal relationships where the stakes can be so high.  Someone has to “win,” so the words of the other are barely heard.

I believe this is a product of our hurry-up western culture.  We don’t take the time any more to sit quietly and absorb what the other is saying, think about it a bit, and then try to offer some response that will further the discussion in a positive way.  Indigenous cultures do this.  They make a ritual of important conversations, passing a pipe, or a feather or noise-maker of some kind so that the one given the portentous object knows that it is her turn to speak without interruption and that all the others will really hear – and think about – what she is saying.  Then, in a very democratic way, the ritual object is passed to the next person, who may take quite a while in forming a thoughtful response.  In this way, important decisions of the group are made, and every participant is satisfied that he has been heard.

How did we lose this?

It’s a stress-filled world we live in, and all relationships – from the personal to the business – suffer for it.  I am reminded of when I was a young public relations consultant out on my own visiting my first referral, a psychological management consulting firm.  We had a cordial greeting in reception and went into his office.  I took my notebook out of my briefcase and prepared to make notes as we talked.  I asked questions.   We spoke, or rather the potential client responded to my questions, for about an hour.  And at the end of my note-taking, with a fair understanding of what was needed, I shoved my notebook into my briefcase and started to pull myself out of my chair.

“One moment,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?”  I’m sure my face reddened as I planted myself back in my chair.  I had no rehearsed phrases about my experience or expertise and I fumbled my responses for an embarrassing 15 minutes.  I learned that, in whatever relationship, the communication needs to open up in both directions, with both parties listening carefully.  My new client was a psychologist, and I was intimidated (I’ve always believed psychologists have this magical ability to see right through you), so I failed to remember that he needed to know something about me other than that I was a good, but shy, listener.

I later invited a man with superior experience into the firm – a creative guy, who was more entranced with his own creative input than with the client’s real needs or budget.  With my ability to listen, I was able to temper his impulsive responses, but the partnership didn’t last long.

All lessons learned.  Now I know to quiet myself inside when someone else is speaking – especially people I love – so that I can offer the most thoughtful, even wise, responses.  This has taken a lifetime to work on and get right.  And I’m in no way perfect.  I have just learned to leave my own little ego in the pasture while I really hear what the other person is saying.  And sometimes it makes me want to cry, because the process of listening from the heart, as well as the head, activates empathy – a precious commodity these days, and something every writer must cultivate.

© 2018, Sandra Shaw Homer

Photo by SSH

 

 

 

 

My Poem “Holding” Published in Junto Magazine

Holding

You place the heel of my hand
against your brow
so that my fingers spread out
over the curve of your head
settling down into your hair.
I laugh. Why are you doing that,
I ask. To hold the top down,
you answer. It feels good
To hold your head like this –
large and round like a melon,
you say, solid and field warm.
I want to be your head
under my hand, feeling held,
contained, all there. I am
both me, holding, and you, held –
all one, all the same.
Our bodies shift in the dark
and my hand slips away.
You put it back. We cannot
have enough of this oneness –
and, feeling it, we do not sleep.

© Junto Magazine, 2017

Junto Magazine, December 2017

 

The Power of Memoir

A faraway relative wrote me at Christmas to say she had read Letters from the Pacific and liked it, and that she had keyed particularly to things relating to family. “We have more in common than I thought,” she wrote, and it struck me forcefully that she and I – who haven’t seen each other in 30 years and who write only at Christmas – were able to connect across time and space through the telling of a very small part of my personal journey.

It also struck me that she and I, while experiencing such similar feelings, have arrived at such different places. I had written:

Day Three, at Sea: I am remembering, as I look out at an almost full tropical moon and smell the sweet night as the sky begins to pale over the Pacific, that my father was in these waters at the end of the war. It was from a ship somewhere out here that he wrote that horrified letter to his Admiral after the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the letter, he sounds like an outraged, disillusioned youth – almost as if he hadn’t yet seen Omaha Beach, with the bodies rolling in the surf and the shells screaming overhead. Maybe with Hiroshima, he finally had enough of killing and death. When I was growing up, he never talked about the war. Being here reminds me of this Pacific connection to him – pacific connection, after all the rage at his abuses – and it occurs to me that I would like to go through his papers once more. After he died, I could only skim them, didn’t even want to touch them. Now, here, another notch in my ability to forgive him seems to have clicked into place. I go up to watch the sunrise from the observation deck. All alone out here, with nothing but the balm of a peaceful sea.

Writing this was the first moment on that amazing journey when I was able to look back with calm, past the anger, and realize that forgiveness was what I was really searching for. It’s taken me a long time to find it, but feeling the faint tectonic shift on that peaceful dawn established me on the path. Out there on that wide ocean, I was beginning to discover the healing power of memoir.

And now I see that the power of memoir to touch the hearts of others is a testament to the commonality of human experience; that each of us, however, has a special “take” on that experience that, in the expression, can draw us closer; and, finally, that none of us is as unique as we think we are.

Photo by SSH

Photo by SSH

 

© Sandra Shaw Homer