I had a conversation that made me ponder what it feels like when someone is listening to you, when your voice is heard. I can't really think of anything that honors a human being more than giving them a voice and truly listening to what they have to say.
These days, I think we are trained to tune things out. Advertisements, telemarketers... 1,000's of messages compete each day for our attention. So we master the art to selective listening. We must. Our brains just can't process that much information.
Politics of the day drive us deeper into holes, typecasting people on the other side of the fence. But telemarketers, political opponents and the like aside, how much do we really listen?... to our spouse, our children, our co-workers, friends, relatives?
Personally, I spend more time than I care to admit thinking about my responses while someone is still talking.... or synthesizing the conversation thinking that I've already gotten the jist of what they are trying to communicate. Or if i am going to be completely honest, sometimes I tune out completely thinking about my to do list or major concern of the day.
What if, instead, I just listened. Completely. Fully. What if I honored people I by making more space for them too be heard? What if I amplified thier voice by creating opportunities for other people to listen? What if someone decided to do the same for me?
Jesus left us with a single command...
love each other.
I might make more progress on that if I set my own agenda aside. If I stopped worrying so much about who was listening to me and truly set myself to the task of listening.
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