A friend recently told me that my brain runs too fast analyzing what’s being said and thinking of what to say next that it makes it hard for me to be a good listener. She’s probably right. I had always thought that knowing exactly what to say at the right time is what sorted out the good listeners from the bad ones. But I realized, when she said that, that sometimes there isn’t anything someone can say. Sometimes, there isn’t an answer. And when there isn’t, I suck at it.
Whatever skill needs to be employed in those cases — to listen without having the answer — is probably useful just the same even when there is an answer. That skill, whatever it is, is one that I don’t seem to have. But if I did, and this is just conjecture, it would make me a better listener in all cases. So I’m looking for that skill.
I keep a text file on my computer named “things I should never forget”. It’s mostly just small quotes from various people and links to whatever they came from. It’s full of good things. Things like:
It’s getting immensely easier to enjoy living as I stop trying to prove a point to anyone and just do what’s good.
Yesterday I added a new bit of knowledge to this book of my life:
Don’t be an asshole. Learn to love donuts.
It’s no wonder it has become so easy for us, as a society, to tell lies and half truths to get what we want. We’ve seen it used over and over again as a tactic for pacification since we were so very young.
Imagine you’re a young child. Your father is about to leave for the day and you don’t want him to. Your father told you he’d be back at the end of the day and covered you in hugs and kisses, but that it didn’t help to ease you. He told you didn’t want to go but that he had to. That didn’t help much either. Then, another adult tells you that your father is really just going to get you a snack, and that he’ll be right back. That makes you feel better. You stop crying and your father leaves. You’re happy to go on playing and wait for him to return. But he doesn’t. Not until much later that evening. After you’ve glanced at the door so many times that you eventually stop looking. When you see him you’re so happy that he’s there that you almost forget that it took longer than you expected. Almost. But day after day, time after time, over and over again, it sticks and you remember. You learn that people lie to get what they want. They lie to innocent children and they lie to other lying adults. Lying is a fact of life, a required tool. A tool requiring mastery.
When there are turtles under the bridge, when there are fish in the pond,when the birds sing us home, when there’s a frog in the car that we can’t get out, life is good. And those little laughs, the little giggles, the little smiles, make everything that much more amazing and bring warmth to even the coldest days. I am inspired by her, every day, to be more like I want to be. Whoever said parenting is a zero sum game