When Listening is the Best Response
Words are not always needed
What do you say to someone who is going through the fear and pain of watching her husband slowly die before her eyes? What do you say when she finds herself all alone for the first time after sixty years of marriage? What do you say when her estranged child pours salt on her already raw wounds?
These are not hypothetical questions. The subject of this evolution of pain is a friend I have known for decades. She was my acting agent when I first moved to Connecticut, and we quickly became friends.
Time passed, I stopped acting, she closed her agency, I moved to the other end of the state, and then even further away to NYC. We maintained our friendship mostly through birthdays and holidays. Until she shared her husband’s diminishing health.
It took me a lifetime to become comfortable responding to these kinds of questions. I habitually froze, not knowing what I could possibly say to make someone feel better. And then I realized there was probably nothing I could say. But I could listen – and that I did.
“Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don’t have to do anything else. We don’t have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.” -- Margaret “Meg” Wheatley
I go into a meditative state of sorts when engaged with the deep listening this level of communication requires, and become comfortable in the moment. My entire focus is on what I’m hearing in the words, not hearing in the silences, and how that feels. These are conversations of the heart.
With this friend, I have been able to occasionally offer a perspective based on our many years together, and I’ll sometimes ask a question. But mostly I simply listen. I witness her fear and her pain, and I hold a space in which she can say what she must.
And the result? So often she says, “You understand me,” and she thanks me for listening. In her immediate world, no one listens so she holds in the pain. My heart breaks for her, and I listen more.
Listening and allowing someone to unburden themselves is a gift we can give each other. Simple, yet profound.
A Reflection
I am writing this with half an eye on the calendar as the second anniversary of the passing of one of my closest friends inches its way to me.
We had what seems like a lifetime of being there for each other, of listening without judgment as one of us needed to ease a weight we carried or needed to understand something that we could not untangle on our own. And sparking joy – oh, how we loved that!
She gifted me with a call from her hospital bed on one of her last evenings. We laughed together, shared beautiful memories, left nothing unsaid that needed to be spoken. And throughout all, we listened, we cared, we felt loved.
A Question
Have you experienced the gentle power of being deeply listened to without judgment? I’d welcome hearing how that affected you in the comments.
Hell yeah! Listening is a rare and underappreciated skill. People who have it are jewels.
I am not a natural listener. I learned this from talking to brilliant interviewers who I worked with in research. You need to focus wholly on the moment and I naturally tend to try to mesh new information with ideas gained elsewhere. But I agree wholly that it is what good friends provide each other. (I opted out of interviewing in my research and concentrated instead on the planning and writing up stages.)