THE ART OF LISTENING

I understood that he was delighted. He was charismatic, alive, happy. Took initiative, moved naturally and had good energy. I often pull away when I look in the direction of events. You probably have to be a little brave and disarming to get close to me. This was a person easy to like from the start. He invited me out to dinner. 

It was fun talking to him. Lively eyes, gestures, joy. Gentlemen. I like talking to strangers who have a language, who develop reasoning and from that a curiosity grows. We had a lovely evening. There were no limits to my questions, he told me. He was a brilliant storyteller. A really good table coaster if we had been at a party. 

After an hour or so I began to recognize the situation. My curiosity about him, my questions, my listening gave him the brightest light of the spotlight. He got to stand on his stage and talk and tell as if the words would never end. And he was brilliant. Lovely. And I let him. I looked at him and smiled. I had already ended our relationship. Before it had even started. Why? Because he didn't ask me a single question during the evening. Throughout his life, he had missed the most important thing to have a good conversation and a good relationship. The art of listening.

When I was thirteen I ran away from home. I won't go into what exactly triggered the decision here, but it was about physical and psychological violence in my home environment.

I ran away to my friend and her family. They received me, they knew about my home conditions and always had the door open.

That evening, in their safe warm environment, we sat and listened to music and dreamed away, me and my friend. Her mother came and sat down and we started talking. About what happened and how I felt. It was the first time in my thirteen-year-old life that an adult listened to me. I had to tell. She really wanted to hear. She let our energies flow and she caught my despair, my sadness at what life looked like in that broken thirteen-year-old body. The art of listening.

I don't know many people who can listen. I don't know many people who finish listening. Who does not interrupt the conversation with his own seasonings about his own events, which seem to beat the other party's by a horse's length.

The difficult thing is to hold back, to let your own words and initiatives that want to rest - and give the conversation flexibility and direct attention to the person you are talking to. If you're lucky, your friend is also interested in listening to you. Then magic is created. The questions turn into reasoning, conversations, sometimes short, sometimes long. Giving time to listening. To let the listening follow you around the corner and see where the conversation is going.

The next time someone close to you "disturbing" you when you're idly scrolling on your phone or toad and wants to talk to you, lift your head, put the phone down and meet her or him by listening. Listening to those closest to you is one of the thousands of ways you can show love every day.

Until I was 57, I accepted the fact that I was seriously uninteresting. But then, then I started listening to myself.

With love m.