Monday, January 28, 2013

The Gift of Listening

Amy Hauptman:
Listening is an unglorified activity.

We all want to be heard. We all want to be understood. But whotruly wants to sacrifice their time and energy to simply listen to someone else?

We can pay professionals to listen to us (on an hourly basis). We can get our pseudo-therapeutic community to “listen” to us via Facebook and Twitter. But when was the last time you were intentional about sitting with a friend (other than your significant other) and just listening, without inserting your opinions, your commentary, or your general “wisdom” and advice.

I have a friend who describes listening as giving someone a drink of water. Most North Americans have access to clean drinking water and don’t suffer from physical thirst, but people are thirsty for someone to listen to them. We generally don’t want to be the one listening, though; we don’t want to have to make the effort to try to understand a friend, because that puts us in a position of servanthood. It requires humility, effort, time, and energy. It requires putting aside our own voice, our opinions, for the sake of making space for another person’s voice to be heard.


No comments: