Listening

These authors make the point that listening is a highly evolved human behavior.  A true listener empowers the speaker by acknowledging their voice.  It is a sign of respect.  Listening transmits the message of equality from the listener to the speaker.  It brings the speaker to the level of peer, which in a relationship, is a sign of connection.  In a hierarchal situation, it brings the speaker up to the level of the person who holds some sort of power. 

When we listen to our children, we are showing them that we respect their human dignity and their ability to grow, change, think and be an individual.  We acknowledge their rightfulness in being human. 

When we listen to our elders, we are also showing respect for their human dignity, life experience and the groundwork they endured to provide us a place and world in which to exist. 

When we listen to our peers, we are showing respect for their own concepts and learning, pains and humaity.  We acknowledge their very existence. 

Listening to others and listening to our own inner voices is how we construct our knowledge, our being and our psyche.  It is part of the reciprocity of connection that is so basic to being  a human.

This observation about listening reminds me of Parker Palmer's Courage to Teach, where he wrote about the teacher providing a learning space for his students.  He thought it was key to address his students, then give them a pause, a space, where they could reflect and form their own thoughts, and then feed those thoughts back to the class.  He recommended that teachers have the courage to stay silent in the class, and allow the students to use their voices as they all listened. 

I find that when my children wish to spend time with me, I have the opportunity to listen to them, question their thoughts and see them as individuals.  Or.. I can become the authority, speak up, and stop their revelations in an instant.  Listening is something that I must work on.  I must use the voice that I have found for myself, and also be open to the voices of others.