Listening … is About Them

Someone said to me the other day that they weren’t interested in the subject and so they weren’t listening.

Listening isn’t about what we’re interested and not interested in. It’s about what the other person is interested and not interested in. (1)

They said they weren’t interested in listening because they already knew what happened. Listening isn’t about what we know and don’t know. It’s to give the other person a chance to lay everything out on the table and see what they’re dealing with.

Real, high-quality listening is not for us. It’s for the other person. Present, conscious listening is for and about them.

It’s not to provide us with the occasion and the forum to deliver our favorite lines and insights. It’s not for us to parade what we know. It’s for the other person to see what’s going on with themselves.

Listening is a selfless act. It’s a great blessing for the other person. They get the relief they seek from the therapist without the therapist needing to do anything else but listen … and share a wee bit to keep their hand in the game.

And it’s so invisible. How many times have I had someone say I’m a brilliant conversationalist when all I did was listen! But the comment does highlight the fact that listening is a rare commodity.

It was listening that led me to ask the universe the question that ushered in the vision: If I listen to people long enough and their puzzle turns into a picture, could it be that life itself is a puzzle and, if so, what is the picture that life is? Boom. Everything went black and I watched the total journey of an individual soul from God to God. When it was over, the words formed in my mind, The purpose of life is enlightenment. (2)

As a sociology graduate student, I was studying to be a group leader and therapist. I followed Jay Haley’s Problem-Solving Therapy and was getting nowhere. When I suggested a solution, people would look at me in surprised silence for a minute and then continue on with their story.

After banging my head against the wall enough times, I fell silent and began to listen. And listen. And listen.

The longest I listened was eight hours – as an experiment. I wish I could say I remember anything about it, but I don’t.

But people began having insights and Aha’s! The very thing I was there to assist with was happening without any strategy, device, or methodology other than listening!

I knew that, without someone providing the listening, these predicaments, often complex, would not unfold and be gone. No amount of advice would substitute for it.

Med beds will cure what ails us now but, if we lacked med beds, I’d suggest to all therapists that they drop what they’re doing therapeutically and just listen.

How little listening there is in the world. How few people in the world know how to listen.

Footnotes

(1) On listening, see: