Nothing More But to Listen

   I have sometimes thought that listening is not as essential to a conversation as sharing ideas. It seems that the culture I grew up in highly values the exchange of ideas, as well as having the most 'original' idea of all to contribute to the table of discussion. But lately, I have been thinking about how complex listening is as a skill. I have all too often associated listening with only a passive 'absorption' of other people's ideas, as though listening were just 'filler' speaker and listener, or a 'space to hold ideas'. But a lot seems to happen when a person is truly listening with the whole heart.
     One of the things I really need to do in order to listen is to really know and accept the fact that I am 'here' in this place and nowhere else. I don't think this is as easy as it perhaps seems at first glance. Even when I make a determined 'effort' to listen, I am sometimes only waiting for something to add to what the person is saying. On the contrary, to truly listen, I almost need to completely let go of the desire to add anything to what the other is saying. Just as when I am appreciating a work of art, I am not adding my own work to the existing one, so I practice enjoying something for what it is. I am not even there to append my footnotes or commentary to what is being said. Rather, I am getting into the world of the person with whom I am interacting, and creating a shared world in the process.
     In listening, there is often the threat of personal annihilation if one clings to this 'self' that is in a conversation. For example, what happens if I suddenly realize that there is nothing for me to contribute to this discussion---simply no words at all? It's so easy to then go to the fear that I am not perceived as listening at all. Again, this goes back to the common attitude that listening requires an active contribution on the part of the listener: something to 'echo back' to the speaker to assure her that I am truly here in the moment. But as long as I am only listening to 'appear to be listening', I am truly not hearing the other at all. The tricky part about listening is that I have to abandon what I think I 'know' about someone else to really know what they are saying in this moment.
    Another thing I am doing while listening wholeheartedly is suspending my desire to manipulate another person's opinions or viewpoints. I believe that this aspect of listening is perhaps the hardest balancing act of all. It requires both listening to other and listening to the self, to know how I am responding to what another person is saying. Am I responding out of a desire to change the person, to gain something from him or her, or to genuinely understand? Am I listening to strengthen my own perspective, or am I doing so to learn and be open to new learning? It seems important to be self-aware: to know what I intend to do with the listening with which I am engaged. And it's  especially challenging to allow myself the chance to expand or even rupture a few cherished beliefs of mine, in order to accommodate the challenges of knowing another. Paradoxically, I have found moments when I felt most connected to someone, when I had let go of the compulsion to use speech to influence or control the flow of conversation.
    In my last entry from January 11, I wrote about my reading of the Thai monks who are doing environmental activist projects. And lately,I have been thinking that people need to learn how to listen before they can protect the diversity of the planet. Listening seems to be the communicative model that most clues me into what environmentalism is, because listening is also about cherishing wild, open spaces where nothing is predictable and everything is valuable in its own niche. While the eye can enclose or focus on specific targets, listening is more inclusive and less discriminating: it takes in a series of interlocking symbols which require each other in order to be fully understood. While seeing 'isolates' chosen objects of perception, listening tends to operate by integrating a succession of sounds into meanings and networks of associations.
   I can't say that I am a deep listener or even a very thorough listener. But examining the act of listening helps me better appreciate its depths and to  see it as a valuable communicative tool in its own right.