What are you listening to?

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"No one really listens to anyone else.  If you try it for a while, you'll see why."

Mignon McLaughlin

I laughed when I read this quote early one morning.  I laughed and thought, Amen, sister!  

There is so much noise these days it is hard to know what to listen to, so we stop listening altogether.  The catch is that we have no idea we've stopped listening.

Which makes my pleading with the quiet voices in my head kind of ironic.
Please, please, please say something!  I beg as I drive.
Silence.
I told these new silent characters they were being rude, obnoxious, unbearable, just sitting there silently like that.  They rolled their eyes (as teenagers tend to do) and kept watching me stew.

Be that way! I growl, yanking at the door to the gym just a little too vehemently.  Right.  Time to kick some imaginary ass at kickboxing (Guards up!).  In the middle of front kick, back kick, switch, switch (repeat) those silent kids decide they are going to to open their mouths and start talking.

Holy crap!  Are you talking to me?   And then I have to restrain myself from shouting at the others in the class, Shut up a minute.  Can't you see I'm listening!


The kids in my head told me that I was wrong about them.  Wrong about the story.  Wrong about where the story was supposed to go.  That's why it wasn't going anywhere.  I was facing in the wrong direction entirely.  Kind of like I was facing the wrong way in class because while I was frozen listening to imaginary voices, everyone else was busy kick, kick, switch, switching.

Accusingly, I snipe, But you said . . . I cut myself off.  They never said anything.  I just put words in their mouths to fill the silence.

The voices in my head taught me a very important lesson.  Listening is not something people often do.  Wait!  Where did I see that again?  Oh, first thing in the morning.  I even laughed about it.  Somehow, it doesn't seem so funny anymore.

Instead of talking over them, I listened.  I learned that kids don't always have the words, the conversational skills, or the heart to tell us stupid adults what's up.  So, they say what they can, and sometimes that is nothing at all.

The problem then becomes adults filling in the blanks.  I'm willing to bet we fill them in incorrectly just as often as we get it right.  When my characters let me glimpse a few moments in their lives and then fell silent, I filled the silence with this crazy fantastical story that was so convoluted I couldn't even wrap my brain around it.  No wonder they just sat there and stared at me thinking, I can't believe we trusted this woman could tell our story.

If I'm hearing voices inside my head incorrectly, how many other voices on the outside am I mishearing?

My own kids were instantly at the top of my list.

Like my ever-growing daughter who will one day be a teenager too (oh, the horror!).  When that day comes, it is highly unlikely that she will come to me and say, "Mom we need to talk about sex/drugs/alcohol because I feel undereducated about these pressing teenage issues and I'd like to get a good handle on them before I go to that party you don't know about at which the parents will not be home and there will be lots of sex/drugs/alcohol."

Instead, she'll probably say something like, "Mom, I'm going out with my friends."  And then, silence.

Do I stare at her blankly waiting for her to say what I want to hear?  I hope not.  I hope that by then I'll be a little more practiced at listening.

So I began my practice.  I listened to what my kids were saying to me.  Although they may have been rattling on about Legos and outer space and fractions, when I listened carefully, I could hear something genuine in their pleas for my attention.

Am I important to you?
Do I matter to you?
Do you love me like I love you?

I'd never heard those things before.  I'd never really listened.

So I must say, with all due respect, Ms. McLaughlin, I gave it a try.  In my opinion listening is well worth the effort.