So my best friend Jason shared with me an author. Her name is Brenda Ueland, and she has written a few books, one of which really inspired me to write this today. I wasn't aware of her writing before, but apparently, she is a writer that used to write in the paper in Minnesota, and her collection of stories is available in a book titled, Strength to Your Sword Arm. According to Jason, the title of the book comes from her signature that she wrote in her columns.
Here is a wonderful excerpt from this book about listening skills:
"I want to write about the great and powerful thing that lstening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those who we love. And least of all - which is so important too- to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. You can see that when you think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.
This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weazens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it. It makes us people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good...
When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created. Now there are brilliant people who cannot listen much. They have no ingoing wires on their apparatus. They are entertaining, but exhausing, too. I think it is because these lecturers, these brilliant performers, by not giving us a chance to talk, do not let us express our thoughts and expand, and it is the little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast us new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. That is why, when someone has listened to you, you go home rested and lighthearted.
Well, it is when people really listen to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way.
In order to learn to listen, here are some suggestions: Try to learn tranquility, to live in the present a part of the time every day. Sometimes say to yourself: "Now. What is happening now? This friend is talking and I am quiet. There is endless time. I hear it, every word." Then suddenly you begin to hear not only what people are saying, but what they are trying to say, and you sense to whole truth about them. And you sense existence, not piece-meal, not this object and that, but as a translucent whole"
Now, isn't that wonderful? I have ordered to book online, because I really want to read the entire book now. This is for me, what wisdom sounds like, and while I may not be able to perfectly ascribe to the listeningdom that she describes, I think I can try.
Jason and I had a long conversation last weekend about listening skills. In her writing, she also talks about how her friend, a father, a very intelligent man, lost his listening skills as he progressed in his professional life. After a period of not having met him, she converses with him only to be dissapponted by his loss of listening skills, which he had in his younger life. However, she lightly reminds him of that fact, and he regains his skills. She also describes that most men have a harder time listening than women. Although my defense mechanism suddenly kicked in, I "listened to her" by reading on. (Anytime I feel my defense system gearing up, I think that I need to really pay attention to my thoughts, because it most often is a very very important issue that I am facing). Men, who often times cannot listen, are lonely beings. This is because men, who may be successful in their jobs and achieved life-long goals, without listening skills, were not able to develop the friendship or relationships that make them "whole." How sad is that? I really felt for myself and others who do not have the listening skills. We become lonely being, not because we have nasty personalities, and even when we are successful, but only because we do not listen well.
This truly was an eye-opening writing for me to discover. I will bite my tongue, gulp some air, and listen next time someone has something to say, so that I not only hear what they are saying, but understand what they are trying to say.
Thank you Jason, for sharing that with me. As I always do, I love you with all my heart.
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