Much silence makes powerful noise. African proverb
Whenever our children visit us at the coast, one of their very first observations each time is about the quietness of the place. Of course, birds sing and often we can hear a chorus of frogs. One of my favorite sounds is the mud popping in the marsh. But city noises are absent. The only manmade sounds around here are the occasional shrimp boats passing on Sapelo River or a rare flyover by Ft. Stewart helicopters.
Response, a publication for United Methodist Women, recently ran an article about the power of listening. The page-long feature entitled “Listen” presented a blank sheet with ten statements, mostly proverbs from around the world, about the power of listening. The sheer simplicity of the page spoke volumes.
There are none so blind as they who will not listen. Spanish proverb
The art of listening is far more than using our ears to hear noise. In this day and time, most of us have become very adept at tuning out much of the din around us. But in doing so, we often may miss a very important message.
Adjunct faculty member of Seton Cove Spirituality Center and guest lecturer at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Bob Lively points to noted psychiatrist M. Scott Peck as an expert on the importance of not only hearing and but also actually listening to what is said and how it is spoken. According to Lively, “Peck declares that the way we human beings can best nurture each other is to listen. And by listening, he means listening to another human being with far more than our ears, listening with our hearts.”
Lively explains, “Just the other day I was sharing lunch with a friend in an Austin establishment when it dawned on me that literally everybody in the place was talking, including me. I quit only long enough to ease back in my chair so as to pose to myself this unsettling question: If we’re all so busy talking, who can possibly be listening?”
Who indeed?
Listen or your tongue will make you deaf. Native American proverb
Colleges and schools across this nation often offer freshmen brief courses in study skills. According to much research, the ability to listen closely is one of the most important skills for learning. Actually, the art of real listening requires three basic steps. 1. Hearing. Hearing means listening enough to catch what the speaker is saying. In other words, while the listener might not be able to repeat specifics of a message, the topic of the message has registered in his mind. 2. Understanding. Understanding means that the listener heard enough specifics to be able to restate the facts accurately in his own words. 3. Judging: Does the listener believe the speaker? Does he agree or disagree with the message?
Who speaks sows; who listens, reaps. Argentina proverb.
When I was teaching freshmen to use their senses in gathering information for writing, we spent several days practicing how to look and really see, how to distinguish tastes, how to recognize scents and understand that fragrances trigger the most memories, how to touch and really feel, how to feel so that we are really touched, how to hear and really listen.
On the first day that we used our ears, all students removed everything from the tops of their desks. They sat with hands folded on their desk. All speaking and noise making was banned. Then we listened to the silence of the room. But it wasn’t quiet. We could hear the tick of the clock, the squeak of a desk as a student shifted position, a cough, the steps of someone walking in the hall, the birds chirping outside the window. Someone’s stomach growled causing a ripple of snickers. Then, the students wrote about listening to silence but hearing the roar. Next, I read Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham. I began by telling them that I wanted them to listen beyond the tone of my voice, the rhyme and rhythm of the poem, the repetition of sounds, the moral of the story.
And when they really listened to the skill of the author, they heard the onomatopoeia in his choice of words. Dr. Seuss is the master of the read aloud. What insightful papers these students wrote from this exercise. As our final listening activity, the students paired up and each told his partner his life story. Each listener then wrote a lengthy biography about his partner. The subject of each biography was the first reader of the paper about him or her, and each marked any error in fact. Fortunately, the subjects found very few errors in listening. These papers revealed that with practice, students can learn to listen with their hearts.
Part of doing something is listening. Author Madeline L’Engle
To be well informed first means knowing our sources. Just because an assertion appears online, in print, on the airways does not make it true. Anyone, you included, can post any bizarre statement online and label it fact. Such declaration does not make it so. However, anyone who makes threats can expect a visit from the FBI and the CIA constantly monitors terrorist “chatter.” Otherwise, anonymous verbiage floats forever in outer space like a giant grab bag. To advance from ignorance to knowledge, we must be wise in the choice of sources we access. I love the observation that we can have differences of opinion, but not different facts.
The best of America emerges when our electorate is educated and well informed about all the issues. We may not speak with the eloquence of an orator or be as creative as an artist, but we all can be good listeners and well informed voters.
While language is a gift, listening is a responsibility. Poet Nikki Giovanni
2012
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