day 11: stopping and listening

mission:

• really listen to someone and just be an ear

i talk a lot (surprise).  yesterday, again like many days, i had one idea at the beginning of the day of what i was going to do, but ended up doing something else.  what i wanted to do was going to take more time than i had, but i kept hoping i’d find some sort of nonexistent hour in my day to do it.  i let the whole day pass by and decided i’d do two acts today (one of them being the specific one i intended for yesterday).  but by the time i went to sleep, i realized i’d ended up doing something in between.  not yesterday yesterday, but still before i went to sleep :)  yes, i cheated…my act was done after midnight this time, but technically i started getting together brianna’s gift at 9.30pm the other night and finished around 12.30am the next day…so really, semantics, right?!  hahahaha.  don’t judge me.

i did something i’m not sure i even realized i did.  i listened.  i have a handful of bad habits that i try to continue to work on, sometimes putting more of an active effort than other times.  one thing is really intently stopping and listening and biting my tounge back for a second before i inject myself or opinion into a conversation.  it can often come across very self-centered and disregarding of what the other person has to say when you keep speaking or listen distractedly.  i obviously don’t intentionally mean that, but at the end of the day, sometimes my lack of listening are those things whether i like it or not.

shakirah and i got home around midnight, both beat from long days and planning and lugging for a bonfire tea party i had last night for my birthday.  on the ride to and from the beach, we both pored over the tensions we had been having, but from what i remember, it was mostly me talking and shakirah patiently listening and offering feedback.  by the time we stepped inside my apartment, i think we finally beat my issues enough to death that it really didn’t make too much more sense to talk about me.  so shakirah started sharing experiences of hers, giving me lengthy backgrounds to contextualize her situation.  we both were putting away food, cleaning up, and getting ready for bed but i tried to keep my attention as focused on her as i could.  sometimes not as present as i could have been because i was working on other things and moving about.

we were standing in the kitchen most of the time so i told shakirah we could go to my bedroom and finish up the conversation.  at one point i was looking at some birthday cards i had gotten, reading them without full attention and listening to shakirah without complete focus as well.  i forced myself to put down the cards and really focus on what shakirah was saying and direct my attention only towards her.

at one point shak was standing next to the bed, so i told her to sit.  shak sat down and we talked some more.  once shakirah thought she had gotten out everything she had to say, she headed for the door, but then stopped to say some “last words,” which really turned into a new leg of the conversation.  she noted that she really had had no one to talk to about what was on her mind yet because of coordinating time-zones, so she simply needed to get some things off her chest to clear her mind.  so shak continued speaking and i continued listening, realizing that i still probably talk double of what shakirah had thus far – and she listened to all that.  and so do all of my friends :D  shakirah thought she was done a few times, but again would realize that she really wasn’t.  i for one, probably never feel like i’m done :D  so i appreciated the opportunity to be patient.  once shakirah felt content with what she had shared and felt we had come up with a reasonable resolution on how to frame what was going on in her head, she said she was ready to go to bed.

she told me thanks for listening.  and i realized, ‘whoa, i really listened.  back pat.’  it felt nice to be there for a friend like that.  especially in a way that i can often suck.

listening to someone definitely takes a good amount of work, intent, love, and patience.  it really is one of the greatest things you can do to show you care for someone, especially when that person is specifically looking to being heard.

so yeah, i’d say constantly working at fixing bad habits is definitely a service to all…