Listening (the Other Side of Language)

How well do you listen, really listen to someone? Can just the act of listening help someone? How about save a life?

I asked these questions to a class of 8th graders once and the response was interesting. I’ll give the teeniest bit of background first – I was specifically told that this lesson plan on listening wasn’t appropriate for my class and that 8th graders knew about listening. The administration told me it wasn’t a skill I should be focusing on. These were kids in the South Bronx. I taught it anyway. (I was only there for a week anyway)

At first, the children were confused. What was this about listening? Could it heal? I asked the kids to make a list of what they listen to. It was the normal things, music, their mother, their teacher. Then they got slightly more abstract – the religious tried to listen to God, others listened to nature, to their surroundings. Then I asked if anyone listened to themselves.

There was complete silence. Finally a boy asked how you can listen to yourself.

“I knew it!” I screamed internally, “Everyone needs to learn how to really listen.”

So we talked about our thoughts for a bit, what goes on in our minds. If you are always just listening to others, and not yourself, who are you really? Just a mirror or an individual? I didn’t phrase it like that, but the point of the lesson was that there is as much if not more discovery in silence then in noise and that Listening is a strong power to have, it can even heal.

After the kids began to ‘listen to themselves’ and write out some thoughts I had them think, really think about how just them listening has helped someone and how that made them feel. Finally a girl spoke of how she listened to her sister after a bad break-up, and her sister thanked her for it.

“So how did it make you feel?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t think I really did anything at first, but now I guess I helped her, didn’t I?” she replied.

Slowly others began to talk about how much better they feel when people listen to them, and times when they stopped talked and just listened to their friends and family.

Then came my favorite, the smallest boy in the class told me that his grandma has asthma or emphysema, I forget which, and that he runs and gets her medication when her breathing changes. He never realized it before.

“So you can save her life just by listening?” I asked

He beamed, “yeah, I guess I do, I get her inhaler at the right time. She doesn’t have to ask.”

In areas such as the South Bronx many of the kids feel powerless. They are shuffled in and out of foster homes and youth centers or from aunt to aunt. The poverty is horrendous and there is no continuity of education. The sense of helplessness, weariness, fear, and confusion hangs thick in the air. Before I did my lesson there was a shooting around the corner from the school that killed a ten-year old girl. Desperation is huge.

What I like to think these kids learned is that they do have power within them, and they have an intelligent mind that they should trust. At least the one boy realized he has saved a family member through something he took for granted – his own ears.

Listening is about more than just being quiet though, it’s an active process. The book Momo by Michael Ende is a wonderful treatise on the power of listening. The heroine is so adept at listening, truly listening to people that she not only brings them out of their shell but, in the end, saves the world.

I strive to be as active a listener as I can. It’s not easy, my internal dialogue is always churning. However, language is useless if it stands alone, there needs to be someone else out there who can listen. But for those who feel they can’t speak, they need to understand that the power to listen is just as strong.

How different would the world be if people tried to be active listeners? If people heard, not just the cries, but the joy as well? When confronted with the same thing over and over people tend to become numb and just stop listening. There is danger in that, in assuming the world is one way and will always be one way. It means you’ve stopped trying, you’ve stopped listening.