The Curious Art of Listening

Imagine what the world would be like if we became curious about each other. If curiosity became our first reflex instead of judgement. Maybe we’d become harder to manipulate, too. It’s much easier to convince people to hate one another when nobody actually knows one another.

Listening wouldn’t solve everything. Some ideas cause real harm and need opposing. Some people aren’t speaking in good faith. Curiosity doesn’t require abandoning boundaries or discernment.

But we would hear the story underneath the politics. The wound underneath the anger. The fear underneath the certainty. The love underneath somebody’s religion. The loss underneath somebody else’s rejection of it.

Imagine what we’d learn. We might live in a world where disagreement stopped automatically meaning enemy.  I think we need to remember how to sit together among our differences without immediately reaching for the weed killer.

Imagine what might happen if we became more interested in understanding one another than sorting one another.

Not listen while we prepare our rebuttal. Not listen long enough to decide which box somebody belongs in. Not listen so we can diagnose them, correct them, save them, fact-check them, convert them, or tell them all the reasons they are wrong.

Just listen.

I have gotten to where I can sit with almost any belief system and listen for the light in it. That might sound strange, listening for light. It’s really a simple practice:

1. Let your body soften. Quit rehearsing your answer. Put down the little internal scorecard keeping track of what you agree with and what you don’t.

2. Look at the human being in front of you. Eye contact. Watch their body language. This is where you see the bits that matter most to them with your own eyes.

3. Listen to the story underneath the words. Notice what happens inside you.

What makes you lean closer?
What makes everything become quiet for a second? What gives you goosebumps? What makes your chest ache? What makes you unexpectedly understand someone you thought you couldn’t understand? What makes you think, I have felt that too, even though your lives look nothing alike?

4. Stay there awhile. You can sort out what you believe later. Because sometimes the greatest thing we can give another person isn’t an answer.
It’s the experience of being fully received for a few minutes by another human being. And maybe the light isn’t something one person gives another at all. Maybe it is what becomes visible between us when neither one is trying to win. Maybe that’s why listening can feel so peaceful.

Sometimes it’s simply the strange comfort of realizing that for this moment, another human being doesn’t have to carry their story alone.