Listen Please

I tend not to watch cable news anymore.  It gets me very agitated and angry and depressed and anxious.  But in the wake of the Ferguson grand jury decision, I decided it was time to venture into that brave new world.

I had so many opinions in the days after I turned on the television.  I wanted to share them.  I came to my computer to write them out.  And yet I could never hit publish because I couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that by writing, I was contributing more to the problem.  I was becoming someone who had a whole lot to say who hadn’t done a whole lot of listening.

I pretty much stuck to CNN during my news binge, and the number one thing that stuck out to me was that there was a whole lot of talking and yet not a single person listening.  Newscasters would interview people who would loudly and proudly state their claims, completely oblivious that any other opinions could exist.  And then they would interview someone with a different perspective who would loudly and proudly state their claims, just as oblivious to any other viewpoints as those who came before them.

And then they started interviewing experts and each other, and things just spun even further out of control.  Everything was black and white.  There was a clear good guy and a clear bad guy.  And every single person who had a microphone knew who that was without having heard the grand jury details or having been at the scene or even sometimes having had spoken to anyone at the scene.

But we all knew.   And we all could speak.  And none of us had to listen.  It didn’t matter on which side we came down.  We were right and there was no reason to seek out further truth.

And sadly, that it is where we are as a culture.  Anyone can find their fifteen minutes of fame.  Anyone can comment on a news article.  Anyone (yes even someone like me) can start a blog, and we all can talk.  And those of us who talk the most and incite the most passion are the ones who are heard the most.  We started out as a moderate culture with a few extremists, but the louder the extremists got, the less moderate the rest of us get.

And I spent years moderating debates in my college English classes.  One of the single hardest parts was teaching students to discuss the opposition’s viewpoint.  At first I thought it was just intellectual laziness that was blinding them to another side.  But slowly I started to realize that many of these young adults truly could not understand the viewpoints of the other side.  They didn’t even know what those viewpoint were.

And that’s where we stand right now as a culture.  We scream without listening.  We feel so entitled to our particular viewpoints that we don’t feel a responsibility to inform those viewpoints by listening to all sides.

But then as usual, I started to look closer to home.  I started to look within my own heart.  I have three little girls who like to talk a lot.  Enough that I doubt there have been thirty consecutive moments of silence when they are awake in years.  And usually they are speaking to me.

“Mama look at this…”  “Mama, did you know…” “Mama, guess what happened at school…”

And I can tell you that I try with every ounce of my being to listen to them.  To really and truly listen to them.  I think listening is one of the most important gifts we can give to those we love.  It allows us to know them and it allows them to be seen and heard.  After all, the easiest way to become invisible is to spend time in the company of those who won’t listen.

But even I, with my intense commitment to listening, find myself tuning out and casually shaking my head yes to a statement I barely heard or chuckling to a joke of which I didn’t catch the punch line.

And it makes me mad at myself.  That I fall into this trap.  That I do unto others what I so hate being done unto myself.

And when you start to look around, it’s everywhere.  It’s not only with our children and on the news.  How often are we in the middle of conversations where we barely hear what is being said because we are so committed to what we are going to say in reply?  How often do we disregard those who disagree with us as being ignorant or foolish when we truly haven’t taken the time and energy to fully listen to them and fully understand them even if we don’t agree?  And how many relationships have fallen into ruins when all we allow ourselves to hear are the insults while we close off our ears to the motivations or the pain behind them?

As with pretty much everything I ever write, I’m useless when it comes to solutions.  I don’t know how to fix the world.  I don’t know how to mend the broken that comes to a heart that gets isolated within itself when no one opens an ear to it.  All I know is that I can try to fix my own ears and my own heart, and I can commit every day to listen before I speak.  To seek to understand more than I seek to be understood.

But to be honest, even that is hard.  Because it is so hard to muster the humility to listen when you don’t feel heard.

But no one ever said that acting in love is supposed to be easy.  No one ever said it was painless.  All we are told is that in the end, it is what we are called to do.  To be love to each other.  To be Christ for each other.

And in most cases, the best way I know to do that is to open my ears and stand witness to the pain around me.  To hold space for the tears of a friend.  To listen to the pain behind the anger.  And to love anyway.

Always to love anyway.