Listening
I’ve written and spoken a lot about listening, but one thing I haven’t noted, is how I try to listen and what I listen to (or, how you can cultivate a personal listening project). Mary Oliver once said that “paying attention leads to devotion,” which is a phrase that can be applied to countless aspects of our lives. There is an endless list of things you could pay attention to. Now ask yourself: what do I choose from this list on a daily basis? For example, do you pay attention to other people, yourself, God, nature, street noise, your reading, podcasts, work? Finally, are you paying enough attention, to be a devout listener? How do you know you’ve truly listened?
Listening, I believe, is a deeper level of paying attention. Listening demands a depth of attention that most of us don’t swim to — it is an internalization and reflection of what it is you’re hearing — literally and figuratively, before you respond. This could mean writing valuable bits down after a fruitful conversation or wondering how many questions you asked in direct response to what someone said. However, listening does not only apply to conversations with other people. I truly think that it is rooted in the freelance conversations we cultivate with ourselves. Listening applies perhaps most importantly to how intently we notice the trends, teachings and reminders in our surroundings, paths, experiences and selves, whether we believe in God or not. Listening is choosing to observe, and then hear. It is not settling for ignorance. It is choosing to not be the victim in a set of circumstances. As children, many instances we experience are fresh and unfamiliar, so we take time to listen to them and learn from them. Time slows down. I wanted to share some moments where I have truly heard recently, and where time has slowed down for me. I hope they can help you to do the same.
Soft Wood and Coloured Glass:
My parents have a collection of coloured glass wine bottles. They’ve been in the same place for twenty years, caked in thick layers of dust which block out any light attempting to flow through them. In fact, the dust glitters more than the glass now. I do remember a time when the light shining through the bottles created a kaleidoscope of colour on the ceiling. They sit quietly, unnoticed and excluded from vacuuming, on the tops of our blonde cupboards, where the wood has softened slightly with age. Though I’ve grown since the house was built twenty years ago, I still cannot reach the bottles. Most days I go in and out of the kitchen without even noticing them.
The colours of the bottles, in order, are: yellow, blue, red, blue, green, blue, blue, blue, blue. I looked at each bottle, and instantly mapped a year of my life onto each (this could very well be the writer in me looking for metaphors). It was more memory provoking than anticipated. I recalled events that matched the mood in the colours without much thought, realizing that all I needed was a prompt to see how much has happened between 2011 and now. In between the cheerful yellow, electric red and flourishing green bottles are a few winter morning blue ones — a healthy balance of warmth and cold. Importantly, after the green bottle there are four blue in a row, which I automatically associated with the past four years of my life — the most challenging ones yet. Though an onslaught of painful memories ensued, I was forced to question why the balanced chain was broken and disrupted in the first place — why had the coloured bottle years stopped? As I work on rewriting healthy patterns into my life, I’ve found that listening to spaces where I can make meaning, like in blue glass bottles, has helped me write, speak and sift through a bombardment of thoughts. Maybe, I’ll get a ladder and dust those bottles too. Who knows, maybe some of them aren’t even blue.
This thought process was similar to another reminder I found, which I wrote about on Instagram almost exactly a year ago: Recently, I realized that the most challenging year (1) and hopefully best year (4) of not only my college experience, but of my life, are on the front and back of my uniform. Like they say, not many people see what happens in between; in the grey area that’s secretly golden with growth. Most simply they see where you were and where you are now. Only we can know what lies between the two. It gives me that little extra bounce in my step to be reminded of my journey, when I wear #14 each day. 1 and 4 are undeniably different, but they mean nothing without 2 and 3.
The aesthetics with which I mark my books:
I have a habit of physically annotating my books, notebooks, etc. Recently I noticed the choices I made while doing this — did I write with ink, graphite, crayon? Are there water stains or coffee stains on my pages? Are the pages rubbed raw from erasing? I could clearly tell, while flipping through my old notebooks, where I got excited about an idea and began colour coding, drawing diagrams and highlighting. I finally came back to these notes this past weekend, enchanted by an old list of ideas that I forgot I had. These notes may ignite future writing, or they may act as reminders of where I have been, and what I was thinking at the time. Next up: go idea hunting through the margins of all of the books I’ve read — goodness knows how long that will take.
Message: We all want time to slow down. It will, if we give it a chance to. Let’s all strive to listen compassionately to ourselves, the world, and one another to slow things down and learn. Let’s truly sit with some of the things we hear. Going about your day with the intent to listen broadens what you hear, and then, what you can do with it.
