I remember as a young person that I had a rather sassy response to hearing the statement, “We were created with two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talked.” Few people who know me for any length of time would doubt that I am an immensely talkative person. Indeed, I found it greatly humorous that a small child I know labeled me as “the talking man” because I was apparently far more talkative than a great deal of other talking people that she had been around. This is something I find both funny and also a bit troubling at the same time. After all, a great deal of what I have to say comes first from things I have listened to. If I was unable or unwilling to listen to those around me, I would cut myself off from an important source of information about what sort of questions need to be answered as well as what is going on with others as to what they think and feel. When we listen to people who do not have a habit of listening to others, all they have is to repeat the same stories about themselves that they have told dozens of times or even hundreds of times before. It is only by listening (or its cousin, reading) that we gain new information that we can reflect on. So long as we are only expressing what is on our mind, we have nothing of interest to anyone who has read or heard us before.

Anyone who has ever had to deal with people in authority can well understand that most people in authority simply do not listen. Yet this does not appear to be an inherent effect of possessing powerful offices. Certainly people in positions of power and authority can cultivate habits of listening to and being responsive to the needs and concerns of those around them. Such leaders are certainly unusual enough to deserve special praise as being servant leaders, but the lack of listening cannot be blamed on the fact that people are in power. Indeed, we may safely say that one of the reasons why people seek positions of power is to that they no longer have to be responsive to those around them. People who desire to listen and recognize the power of listening tend to gravitate more towards positions where they can advice and counsel others, seeking to respond to needs and provide insight without desiring the empty attention that comes from being all mouth and no ears. Those who want to direct others without understanding what is going on bring a great deal of trouble into this world, but they should not try blaming the offices they inhabit for this melancholy reality, but their own lack of interest in hearing what others have to say.

The still small voice that comes to us when we turn our ears to the storm outside of our own little caves is what we need to break out of the prison of our own subjective experience. What is limited to our own workings of our mind and heart is of very limited value to the greater world outside, and yet it is all too easy for us to value nothing outside of ourselves. What we know of the hearts and minds of others comes from what they communicate to us. If we are not the sort of people who are prone to pay attention to others and show genuine concern and genuine interest in them, and if we are not the sort of people who are viewed as being full of patience and love and respect, we will not get much information from others. Nor will we deserve to. People who are only interested in forcing others to respond to their own demands and who have no interest in cultivating mutual respect will not get a lot of information from others, and will wonder why they are so isolated and alone without having any hint that they are to blame because they would not listen.

Yet, as tempting as it can be to complain about problems of communication, and as common as such a path is, it is also a ready path to a great deal of hypocrisy. We are all very sensitive to people not respecting what we have to say and not listening to us, but are often far less sensitive to the ways in which we subtly or not demonstrate that we are not interested in hearing what others have to say. It is hard to be just to others when it comes to such matters. There are certainly a great many people whose approach makes me less than enthusiastic about communicating with them, since I would find that any information I gave to them about myself and my own struggles and difficulties would simply be stored up as a weapon to be used against me in the future, and that does not make for successful communication. Such people should not be surprised when others do not wish to communicate with them unless they are ambushed and have no choice but to endure it as best as they can. But we may be such people for others as well, as is often the case.