On Listening

I am five years old. I sit on the couch in the basement staring at the glimmering TV that cheerfully chatters and sings songs, illuminating the afternoon. The basement is cold and full of crickets. Stacks of silk pillows from Thailand are piled on the black-and-white checkerboard tile floor. Next to the Cambodian fish basket table, rattan baskets are piled with Chinese scrolls my parents accumulated in places they lived abroad like Taiwan and Hong Kong. Behind the television, in the laundry room, my mother washes clothes and clips them on the line with wooden clothespins. Even though I can see her from where I sit, she is hard to reach as though parts of her remain in one of those countries where my parents lived before I was born.

“Mom!” I said. “Come see!”

Something delightful on the TV screen captivates my attention. I can’t remember what. It was a miracle, whatever thing it was, conjured by children’s programming of the late ‘70s. I want—need—her to see whatever wondrous thing was on TV so she could understand.

She acknowledged my glad shout, nodding from the laundry room. As I continued to call out—Mom! Come!—she tuned out my calls. She wore a film of distractedness. Preoccupied, she nodded in my direction—yes, just a moment—before returning to her laundry. But she never did come to see what was on TV. It hurt. A hard burn in my chest. She doesn’t remember this incident, but I have never forgotten it.

It's one of our most primal needs and we never outrun it. Infant researcher Daniel Stern found that second only to the childhood need for food and shelter is our need for understanding. Beginning in our infancy, our parents' listening—their attunement and responsiveness to us—has an outsized impact on who we become. In babyhood, we demand that others hear us through paroxysms of tears, howls, and caterwauls. Our parents instinctively parse our cries, making adjustments as they decode what our utterances are communicating and respond to them. Much of infant care is listening and, as babies, we won't survive without being heard.

In babyhood, being listened to confirms that we have a self. As Michael P. Nichols describes in The Lost Art of Listening, a new mother’s mirroring and compassionate naming of an infant’s overwhelming emotions—What’s that frown for? The world can feel kinda scary sometimes, huh?—gives the baby empathetic listening and acceptance, soothing their distress. When she ascribes intention and authorship of action to her baby—You want that, huh? You did that on purpose, didn't you?—she helps create an emergent self learning how to be in relationship with others.

In adulthood listening helps us articulate and integrate deeper layers of that self. Sylvia Plath wrote,"And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter—they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long." Attention and appreciation from a caring listener provide a feeling of safety and witnessing we might not have received before. In sharing our shameful, hidden, or exiled parts we can become a more integrated version of ourself. It can create an unfolding of aspects of our experience that may not have been vitalized by being acknowledged or accepted.

During my first week of graduate school, I was terrified at the prospect of teaching undergraduate students for the first time. I felt tight and shrunken and panicked. I confessed this to a new friend who, it turned out, felt exactly the same way. It was an unburdening, a sensation like an ache had been relieved. Her affirmation confirmed my feelings were understandable and acceptable. My teaching fears—a dank, stuck place inside me—came into the light just through being listened to and discovering a shared experience. Talking with my friend enabled me to understand what I was feeling, firming my understanding of myself. And, discovering that others shared my same fears connected me to something larger beyond myself. On an ongoing basis, we need attention to sustain us. Listening nourishes our sense of worth.

I know this and, yet, I don't. When I've been ghosted. When someone doesn't respond to my text I wonder, why does it hurt so much? Why can't I shrug it off? As digital culture has tilted modern life away from human contact we often exist—virtually—in relationships with people who we can't see. It's easy to forget as I sit alone on my sofa staring at the shimmering iPhone that I am not as autonomous as I might imagine. I am sitting alone yet embedded in social relationships. And whether I'm age 5, 35, or 55 the feeling of not being understood is one of the most painful in human experience. Not being listened to makes us feel less alive, unappreciated, cut off, and alone. Throughout our lives, the vitality of the self depends on the quality of listening we receive.

It seems so obvious a facet of human life, but it gets tossed aside in a contemporary culture rife with shrunken attention spans and deteriorated listening in our day-to-day lives. But, whether I'm in conflict with myself or with someone else, so often the root of it is a lack of listening. It's a practice I try to remember: Set my mental chatter aside, take a deep breath, and listen.

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