“To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.
Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.”
Henri Nouwen
2 Comments
Tom Dills
Wow. How often are we in a phone conversation with someone, and the next thing we hear is the clicking of keys on a keyboard? I’m tempted to stop talking and hang up. Of course that happens to me in face-to-face conversations too. 🙂 Someone asks me a question, and before I can get halfway though the first sentence of my answer, someone else starts talking about something completely unrelated, but more important to them.
A lot of that has to come from television. These “talk shows” where everybody talks at the same time, interrupts and doesn’t pay any attention to the other people in the “conversation.” One of the (many) reasons I don’t bother.
My first thought with this photo was that it’s a shame that in another 5 years or so she’ll be sitting at the same table with friends, wearing a bored expression on her face, staring at her phone and listening through earbuds to lousy music and playing the latest version of Angry Birds. Ouch.
Actually, I think she’s thinking about donuts.
At 25 and 28 I’m grateful and honored that my kids listen well and still know how to carry on a real conversation. At least with me!
Monte Stevens
Yes! About 5 or 6 years ago I approached a couple sitting at a table in a coffee shop. They each were in business suits, laptops open and sitting across from each other. I asked if I could take their photo because to me it was a modern day version of the man and wife drinking coffee but having newspapers erected as a wall between then.
I also see this lack of communicating on airplanes. There are many cases where passengers sit beside each other and will not talk during a two hour flight. We’re losing a precious gift. in verbal face-to=-face conversation.