don't talk, just listen

hi, how are?
good, you?
fine.
good.

how many times a day do we have the exchange with someone? with friends, coworkers, spouses, even the grocery store clerk. and, how many times are we actually HONEST about how we're doing? if we're having a great day, we're very quick to tell that....but, if something is troubling us, are we more apt to tell the truth or instead answer with the requisite "fine?"

i was in an airport a few weeks ago, browsing throught the bookstore and semi-eavesdropping on a [loud] conversation that one of the customers was having with the cashier. he was going on and on about some family problems that he was having, how he had been put out of his house, etc. it was obvious that these two individuals did not know each other by the distracted/disconnected look on the cashier's face, and his sideways glances towards me. i also was certain that they didnt know each other because i just seen Storyteller in the gift shop 10 mins earlier, recounting the same story to the cashier in there, who snickered to herself and another customer after he walked out.

now, without knowing Storyteller's mental health condition (or the lack thereof), i made an assumption that this exchange between he and the cashier (albeit, one-sided) probably was prompted by one question:

"how are you today?"

and, perhaps Storyteller was honest and began to pour out how he was REALLY feeling...to a complete stranger.

now, i am not suggesting that when we're having a bad day that we start recounting our life story and all of our dirty laundry to the mailman, the bank teller, and the girl in the McDonald's drive-thru...but, what i am suggesting is asking yourself--when you say you're just fine, are you? when someone tells you that they're fine yet you can sense that there's something they're not saying, do you probe further? is your spirit such that of, as one of my friends describes it, "a heart with ears" so that a person might feel compelled to want to share with you when they're feeling less-than-fine?

we all have our good days and our not-so-good days. i know that for me, if someone asks me how i'm doing (someone close to me), if i'm having a not-so-good day i still may say "fine." not because i'm lying, but moreso because i may still be trying to process thru whatever it is that i am facing, and might not be in the right place to say it ( sometimes, without bursting into tears). or sometimes, if i do want to talk about it, that might be ALL i want to do is talk/vent, which is sometimes a challenge when you have a LOT of solutions-oriented friends whose natural tendency (similar to my own) is to give advice. maybe Jodeci had it right in the first line of one of their dusties--"don't talk, just listen"--clearly, that is all many of us sometimes want and need.

i close today with a poem that i found when i was in college. in dealing with a difficult boyfriend who very much resembled a brick-wall when it came to communication, i stumbled across this poem which conveyed all that i needed to say at that time.


Please, Just Listen

When I ask you to listen to me and your start giving me advice,
you have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me
why I shouldn't feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you must
do something to solve my problem,
you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen!

All I asked was that you listen -- not talk or do -- just hear.
(Advice is cheap: 504 will get you
both "Dear Abby" and Billy Graham
in the same newspaper.)

And I can do for myself; I am not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.
When you do something for me that I can and
need to do for myself,
you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.

But, when you accept, as a simple fact, that I do feel
-- no matter how irrationally --
then I can quit trying to convince you and get about
the business of understanding
what's behind this irrational feeling.

And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and
I don't need advice.
Irrational feelings make sense when we understand
what's behind them

So, p l e a s e, just listen and hear me.
And, if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn, and
I'll listen to you!

clean out your ears, thereby opening your heart.

can you hear me now?