Radical Listening, Part 1 : Kid Stuff (aka How to Get Out The Door to Go Skiing)
No words, just a feeling.
There’s a book by Lawrence Weschler about the artist Robert Irwin, entitled, “Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees.” The book is absolutely excellent (as is anything by Lawrence Weschler in my opinion), but it’s the title that sticks with me. To me, it means that to truly see something, we have to turn off our word-brains and just take it in with our physical senses.
This past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about radical listening. Radical listening, to me, is being able to listen to someone fully, without immediately relating it back to myself. True listening is a lot like Irwin’s definition of seeing: to borrow the phrase, I could say that listening is forgetting the words that are being said. It’s listening beyond, or past the words. Past the tone, the word choice, or my own feelings. It’s listening beyond me waiting to get my piece in, or have my way. It’s listening to understand, for the meaning, for the feeling and the need in the other person. This type of listening doesn’t require me to immediately respond, or jump to action, or really even feel anything. All it asks is that I try my very best to hear. And actually hearing when listening—hearing beyond the words or my own agenda—is truly difficult.
Things are always more than they initially seem.
In Non-Violent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg, one of my favorite perspective-shifting books of all time, he talks about how listening is equally if not more important than talking for effective communication. He calls radical listening “using your giraffe ears,” which means that since giraffes don’t make any noises, you just open your big ears and use your big eyes or whatever you have to convey that you are paying attention. Then, you pay attention. The point is to remove yourself from yourself and make it about the other person and what they are saying and feeling. Radical listening helps the speaker to get clear on what is going on with them. Everyone wants to be heard—truly heard—and giving the gift of simply hearing can do wonders for healing, connection, and human progress. Probably world peace, too. Just the little things.
We’ll get there, one step at a time.
Whenever I’m able to remember and calm down and implement radical listening in my personal life, it has transformed a tense, uncomfortable moment into growth, connection, and peace. For example, there’s a moment we have nearly every day when we are trying to leave the house, for school or work or even a low-stakes playdate or grocery errand. Or, to go skiing.
Approximately 75% of the time, someone decides they need something immediately before we leave the house. Usually it’s something elaborate, like making skis for a doll, or finding a stuffed animal we haven’t seen in about 8 months to bring along. I respond hastily that we don’t have time, and BOOM, instant tantrum. My reaction to this has to often sink into my own panic about being late or my frustration with non-compliance and then yelling, I hurriedly grabbed boots, shoving them on feet and snapping at people, in turn causing accidental shaming and escalating a further tantrum response. Which feels horrible, not to mention now we are extra late and things have ballooned to full shitstorm status. Should I have just gone and gotten the damn doll? It would have been the easy thing but I don’t always think that the easy is the answer.
Instead, if I’m able to take a deep breath and repeat what’s being said, then truly listen past the request, we can usually get somewhere. We had a total breakthrough when we were headed out the door to ski practice the other night, a perpetual last-minute struggle of trying to get food in mouths and gear on bodies and out the door—at 5:30pm on a weeknight. Every single time I’m literally THIS CLOSE to just calling it. I squeeze my eyes shut and fantasize about just yelling, “THAT’S IT! WE ARE NOT GOING!” while hurling tiny ski boots out the door into the dark night and then curling up on the couch with Queer Eye. But this particular time, when the gloves weren’t quite perfect for the umpteenth time (we have four different pairs of thrifted, hand-me-down, and purchased gloves for this particular child, FYI—she has Opinions), I took a deep breath. Instead of yelling something about the Princess and the Pea, I repeated to her calmly and neutrally, “Your gloves aren’t feeling quite right.” The screaming de-escalated to a sniffle. “Yeah, they are too big.” Instead of replying that they seemed to fit fine all day at school that day, and every day prior this entire year-long month of January, I managed to pause. Something occurred to me, something that would not have occurred had I not been listening ferociously, trying to figure out what was going on. “You know,” I ventured cautiously, “I’ve noticed something. I’ve noticed that sometimes it seems hard to leave the house, and things get a bit more difficult during those times.” Silence for a few seconds. I fought the urge to say something, and just looked away, busying myself organizing the gear in the bag. She didn’t respond, but instead went over and grabbed her other gloves. “I think these ones will be good for tonight, “ She sniffed, put the gloves on, and started walking out the door.
Of course here I have to resist the urge to pat myself on the back, although it was a huge moment. Mainly because I was able to get out of my own way, listen to what was going on, and keep an open mind rather than judging and reacting. I was able to notice the pattern which I hadn’t quite put two and two together on yet, despite it happening multiple times a week for several weeks, because before I had been so focused on my own
I certainly think there’s a limit, a point where over-listening becomes over-indulgent. But that again brings me back to the fact that over-listening isn’t actually listening—it’s just repeating the word part of the listening. Sometimes that’s necessary when our human detective skills haven’t kicked in quite yet. But once they do, I can tap into the true listening, which requires me to step out of the words and look for patterns, energy, other human gifts that we have hidden away. When we pay attention to those, it opens up radical new possibilities for connecting. Beyond the tantrums, beyond the screens, beyond the divides. I’ll be practicing!
Just trying to get out of my own way so I can have those aha moments.
