Listen.
Listening involves being quiet.
But beyond that it involves stilling our own inner dialogue where we prepare what we want to say next or decide what we think about what we’re hearing.
Listening is sitting in the space of someone else’s words.
Not just hearing.
Not just taking in the auditory signals.
It’s observing with our ears the inner dialogue and nuances of another person’s life.
It’s holding space for an experience that is not your own and letting it share space with your own experience.
It might not leave you unchanged.
Listening well is something I have yet to learn.
I am always considering my own perspective too highly and protecting my own opinions without really thinking about it.
I might argue that I heard you, but am I really listening?
Have I stilled the hastiness of my own soul enough to meet your soul with mine?
Probably not.
Probably my inner turmoil is reaching peak boil waiting to be affirmed or challenged by someone else’s.
Probably I don’t even want to listen because I’m busy with my own thing.
But what would it mean to consciously pause all that and learn to take a slower way.
I can get a little idealistic here.
I’m not ever going to manage it all the time.
But sometimes.
Sometimes I can practice listening instead of simply hearing and responding.
Linking up for Five Minute Friday again.
Erika Shirk 
‘Listening is sitting in the space of someone else’s words.’ – that is brilliant!
Listening’s something I have learned,
because it’s now so hard to speak.
But the active listening line’s still blurred
for my own thoughts still do leak
into that which is being said to me,
giving a hybrid kind of message,
word-thicket through which ’tis hard to see,
and misunderstandings doth presage.
I wish I might block out my thought,
and give myself complete to art
of accepting what another’s brought
in offering to my heart.
Perhaps by slow degrees I’ll find
a way to tame and conquer Mind.
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I’m with you, here. I notice myself waiting to respond rather than simply connecting in the moment. What would true, unfiltered hearing glean? A whole lot, I suspect. (Fellow FMFer)
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“Have I stilled the hastiness of my own soul enough to meet your soul with mine?”
Oh Erika, so many of us ask this question in a myriad of ways. We long for this merging and connecting on a deep, spiritual level. You’ve captured that yearning so well here. Thank you!
-Sarah
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I know just what you mean when you talk about that internal dialog going on in your head. Do you ever find yourself not really listening and waiting to get an opening to say what YOU want to say? Do you interrupt? Do you answer a question before it is finished? ? Or am I the only one? Great blog.
Would you please read my blog from Friday ? I am 20.
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