Yesterday, driving to the office, I saw a tall woman crossing the street. It was 8 am, sun was shining, 59° outside.
She was wearing short, light blue shorts, a large, purple puffy down ski jacket, a maroon woolen hat topped with a big pom-pom and long flaps that came over her ears, and bright, neon lime-green running shoes.
It made me think about listening.
I thought that, if I asked her the question, “Tell me about your outfit,” that she would tell me something that made total sense to her.
And I was thinking that, if I really wanted to understand her, if I really wanted to be able to communicate with her, how fun it would be to suspend all judgment and simply listen and understand why from her point of view.
No thinking, “It’s too cold for shorts! And way too warm for a ski jacket! And never cold enough for a woolen hat here in California. And those fluorescent lime-green shoes, you can see them from two blocks away!”
It’s so important in listening that there’s no thinking.
It’s a nothing added to the perfect simplicity of receiving and understanding.
And there’s a joy in doing it in its purity.
It’s liberating not to judge people while listening. Since I learned how to do that, I feel very free of something burdensome. Something that made life not fun. Something that made other people not interesting.
It’s liberating to simply receive, to immerse myself in the other person’s world, to understand it, knowing I’ll have plenty of time to reply if I want to, once they’ve told me everything they want me to know.
Doing nothing but listening is liberating.
One of the greatest joys in life is understanding others’ viewpoints. Others’ viewpoints open up new universes, and the only way to travel to them is to listen.
No, I didn’t stop to ask her, but only because I was driving. If I see her while walking, I most definitely will.
Perhaps she’ll ask me about my outfit, so different from hers, and I’ll tell her about my earrings, there’s always a story there. I’ll bet it takes no time before we’re both really enjoying the conversation.
Be the cause!