The First Duty of Love Is to Listen

No single characteristic reveals as much about a person as their ability to pay attention to others. We live in a culture in which most people feel silenced. The voices emanating from our radios and televisions are often loud, opinionated, and relatively few in number, though the advent of internet blogging has changed this somewhat. Our educational system gives weight to the knowledge and opinions of those who are older (but not too old) and designated as authorities. Our political leadership routinely presents us with self-serving lies and rationalizations. Most people never imagine being able to gain access to the public megaphone or have anyone outside their immediate social circle pay the slightest attention to what they say or believe. And even among those closest to us a capacity for listening is typically not well developed. We are, in general, starved for attention.

As a therapist I wish I could say that people benefit most from the wisdom and blinding insights that I bring to the process. Truthfully, most of what I do is sit in silence and try to formulate questions that will assist patients to figure out what they should do to change their lives. To do this I must pay close attention to what they are saying. Why would people spend good money to engage in such a process with another human being whose own life may be no happier or more fulfilling than their own? The answer, of course, is that most people find it beneficial to be listened to non-judgmentally by a societally designated healer. Many benefit equally from similar (and less expensive) interactions with their hairdresser, bartender, or clergyman.

To be able to focus on the expressed needs and desires of another person, especially when you are not being paid for it, reflects a generosity of spirit that is not randomly distributed in the population. It conveys a respect for the person being listened to that is unmistakable and satisfies our deepest human longing for connectedness. If it is true that we enter and leave this world alone, few of us can live that way for very long without going mad. People alone on desert islands do not flourish.

Little wonder then that we crave the experience of being listened to and respond gratefully to anyone who will do this for us. We are aware at some level that the ability to listen is highly correlated with other desirable traits such as kindness, unselfishness, and empathy. The opposite is also true: It has been said of one of our most famous and opinionated television commentators that talking with him is like trying to drink from a fire hose.

The implications for a deficit in listening skills are ominous. The most obvious characteristic of people who are unable to listen is a lack of interest in what the other person is saying. To really listen to another is more than good manners; it is an affirmation that the person who is speaking has something to teach us.

Like any desirable human characteristic, an aptitude for listening can be faked. Those who make their living by deceiving others, unscrupulous salespeople for example, are frequently superficially charming with a practiced ability to project an interest in others that they do not feel. Their motto: Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not. It can be difficult to determine whether one is in the presence of such a person, though if the transaction involves money or sex, we need to be cautious. In the end this distinction can only be made over time, another argument against the sentimental mythology of "love at first sight."