Archive for February, 2009

Often, a speaker reaches a different place of understanding inside him/herself after having had a chance to speak with the help of a good listener.  Does action result from that new place?  It is a key “so what?” question about listening.  Was the listening simply a nice exercise for the speaker, a “feel good?”  Or was the self-expression meaningful in the sense that the speaker’s opportunity to find or to clear up something important will lead to action?

Ed

I just returned from the gathering where the family received the friends and community.  At the end of the line was a young teenage girl who I didn’t recognize.  She held out her hand and introduced herself to me, “I’m Kate, Peter’s oldest daughter.”  I looked into her eyes, and the enormity of the loss washed over me.  I just looked at Kate for a moment, and feeling totally lost about it all in my own heart and spirit as I stood in front of her, saying nothing I hugged her.  Sometimes that’s the best or only listening you can do.

Ed

I am going to a funeral today.  Sudden death of a young (that words is relative coming from a 65 year old) man who was one of the most well-respected, most loved members of our community here in Ithaca, New York.  He was up cutting a tree and fell.

What does one say to someone who has experienced such a loss?  “I understand.”  “I’m sorry.” “At least he was in our lives for a time” ” He gave so much to so many — you must be so proud and grateful for who he was.”  None of that works, of course.  What do you say to his wife, his two young children, his dozens of brothers and sisters in the extended family?  What do you say to help with the grief of the hundreds or thousands of people who knew him?

I assert that all we can do is listen.  What else is there to do but to understand.  Understanding is the help, not trying to find something to say to make someone feel better.  Being listened to, and being understood is what helps someone in grief.  It sure might not feel that way sometimes, especially if they start to cry even harder.  So sometimes listening becomes a counter-intuitive act of faith — believing that something is right even while it doesn’t fix something up, make things happy.

What has to come out of our mouths, then, to someone who is grieving such a loss has to be something like, “You probably can’t even describe this loss in words” “Must be so hard to even think of going on without him” “All of a sudden, he’s gone” “What a ripping out of such a huge piece of your life” “You don’t care why it happened or how it happened — you just want to take back that it happened.” “It’s all got to feel unreal to you right now, that it didn’t really happen.” “You don’t see how you are going to go on without him.” “You don’t want to go on without him.”  Anything like that which we feel in your heart-of-hearts is what the person might be experiencing.

Fixing up and making happy is to help our own feelings, not the feelings of the person in grief.  It is not so easy to be in the presence of another’s pain.  We want to get rid of it.  But that is not to help them, it is to help us.  Listening is not about us.  Listening is about being in the service of the speaker.  That is the gift.

Ed

“Restorative Justice” is a relatively new concept in the criminal justice system.  The offender and a member of the victim’s family sit across a table from one another, usually many years after the crime.  The purpose is to help the victim restore some sense of sanity to his/her life after the devastating loss.

I watched the process on a program called “Face to Face” on MSNBC, where a 37 year old man faced the sister of man he senselessy and without provocation murdered 21 years ago.  I was struck by a strong, absolute emptiness present in that conversation.  There was nothing the offender could say that would leave the victim feeling “understood.”  What do you say to the sister of a man you shot and killed when you were 16 years old just because you felt like acting out the inner violence you felt and wanted to express?

He was pretty quiet as she spoke and asked him questions like “Why?” “What were you feeling in school that day knowing what you were about to do?” “How do you kill someone you don’t even know?” “What do you think about every year on January 16?”

Sometimes this process is transformative for either or both victim and offender.  In this case it wasn’t.  The sister maintained a fierce anger about who the killer was and what he did.  As I watched the process I realized that the best the offender could do in that case was to listen.  Even that wouldn’t make a difference, but at least the victim might have some sense of being understood.  Maybe listening for a few minutes in a conversation like that would be the start of something that could take years, if ever, to accomplish.  It just all seemed so hopeless to me.

What can we do to heal the regular relationships in our lives where there has been some kind of emotional murder?  Can listening be an opening to reach all the hurt and pain?  And if it could, what would it require from the person (in this case the murderer) to listen, and only listen,  when he/she has so many feelings to express as well?  Whew.

Ed

I just had a fascinating conversation with the Program Director of a local childcare center in Ithaca.  We were talking about the listening and the speaking turns, and about a goal of getting her staff at the school to  listen . . . . all the time — whether it is to an angry parent or to a distressed 4 year old or to each other during staff meetings or to a spouse at home.

Understanding the concept, she asked thoughtfully, “Can we become too conscious?”  She mentioned two friends of hers, a married couple who are totally committed to being responsible communicators to each other and to their professional clients, and to being conscious and present in their lives in each moment.  She said her friends are never “off.”  They prepare and plan their difficult conversations.  They are respectful all the time no matter who is talking to whom or about what is being said.  She said she can almost hear their minds going “CLICK-Step #1, CLICK-Step #2, CLICK-Step #3″ whenever she speaks with either of them about anything.

She said it’s a little disconcerting, and her question to me was about the possibility of life becoming too methodical with such a high commitment to conscious communication.  Is there any fun in that?  Is there joy present if the emotions are so tightly under control?  What if we got every staff member at the school to operate at that high level of consciousness with each other all the time?  Imagine anger always being dealt with productively and cleanly.  Imagine no sniping behind peoples’ backs.  Imagine speaking directly to people about their problem behavior and not having to deal with their defensiveness and reactivity?

Would that be boring?  Lifeless?  Empty?  Or would it be delightful and incredible?

Ed