Listening

I have a confession.  As soon as my husband leaves in the morning, I turn the air conditioning off and open the sliding door.  This is not a huge confession because he really would not care.  He doesn't care about the air until he comes home from work and in a few hours I will want it back on and the apartment will go back to being an ice box before he arrives.  The real confession is- I don't like noise.  I don't like noise because it prevents me from being able to listen.

I think it is when you get to the almost 40 age that you start to learn so much about yourself.  Perhaps its just that you finally start to accept so much about yourself.  Here is what I know about me.  I can sit in a quiet room or outside in the peace of the world alone for hours.  It is when I do my best thinking.  I need lots of time to set goals, work through issues, think about my response to problems.  I cannot do that with people around me and I cannot do that with background noise.  As I write this I can hear birds singing and traffic WAY off in the distance.  It is peaceful.

But- listening to your self, your soul, your heart is not always peaceful.  Sometimes what I hear is so sad, so terribly heart wrenching that I feel like I might break in half.  I think that is why we spend so much time distracting ourselves.  Think of all the distractions in the world- alcohol, drugs, cell phones, ipads, laptops, ipods and so on and so on and so on.  I worry for the kids coming up in the world today.  I worry for my own daughter who has trouble sitting peacefully for 2 minutes even if her family is sitting around her.  I know, know, know that her need to have a friend come over or turn on the tv is a need to distract herself from what she is hearing inside. I know it is so hard to hear what you don't want to hear, but if you spend forever trying to avoid it that is a very dark and lonely path.

I have come to a point in my listening (perhaps it is a form of meditation but nothing official has been taught to me) where I can sometimes tell when I am heading down the heartbreaking road. Most recently that includes reflections on my mom's time in the hospital.  I know how to shut it down without bringing any other distraction into the picture and I only shut it down if I can feel I can't handle it. Otherwise, I just think my way right through it and allow the heartbreaking pain to come because pain is a part of our lives and it is healthier in the long run to accept it, invite it in for coffee for awhile and then send it on its way with a vague promise of seeing each other again at some point.

But listening doesn't have to be pain.  Listening can be peace, happiness, love, problem solving.  The key is to remember you are listening to you so wherever you go is where you should be.

Today, when my daughter wakes up I am not going to rush her off to camp.  I am going to have her come sit on the deck and listen and I am going to ask the question that I think it is time for her to start thinking about.  "What do you hear?"


Originally written on Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 7:26am