Shhhh, I Am Listening

Not that I usually tend to go much deeper than the surface, but events in the past week or so have made me realize that maybe I should.  I have typically been the type that will ask you how you are and then end up halfway down the street (and a thousand miles away) before you have time to answer me, instead of stopping and waiting for an answer.  It isn’t that I don’t care, I do (at least I think I do), but somehow I have been programmed into an instant gratification mode and stay pretty much at turbo speed most of the day (until I crash, burn and roll over).  I really haven’t figured out what the big rush is or exactly where I am going at such velocity.

For some reason, these past days have brought a new light to my thinking.  Maybe it is the lingering summer warmth that has made me want to sit a little longer and listen to what is being said and put off (i.e.  procrastinate) the inevitable.  Or, perhaps the people I have recently encountered have more interesting things to say (hmmm, quite likely).  Possibly the moon is in the seventh house and everything is aligning for a wake up call to occur which will harken the earth’s population to stop and actually listen (and hear – there is a difference) to what their fellow human beings have to say, in the hopes that we all could reach out to one another and try and get along a little better.

What I have found is that there is always (unequivocally) a story behind the story.  What you see and hear on the surface is not even, remotely, the complete picture.  Behind every statement that is spoken, there are volumes that are untold.  If you are fortunate enough and can find the right button to push, those tales that really tell the story may start to seep out.  For some reason, and I know we all do it, we hold back – and in the process lose an opportunity to connect on a different level with folks.  And 9 out of 10 times, what is not being said, hands down, speaks more of who that person is, what they are about and where (physically and mentally) they come from and is a heck of a lot more extraordinary.

If I can still learn new things about my love muffin after 16 years, surprisingly, although it has slowed after the flurry of the “hot and heavy - WOW” years, to at least one revelation a week, I can only imagine what I could discover if I knew more of the people and their stories on my street, in my town, not to even mention around the country and world.  I know if I gave a call to my brother and even though we had the same parents and lived under the same roof for 18 years, I would be enlightened by something I didn’t even know that happened during our formative years together.  I have to crawl out of my self-induced cave and find out why folks are the way they are and how they got to be where they are today and not be so quick to draw conclusions (although that can be fun in its own right) and maybe give them a chance to not assume and deduce so quickly about me.

I am on a mission to find out one thing I don’t know about everyone I encounter today.  I am going to be a better listener.  I don’t want to judge so quickly.  I hope I won’t be so naïve to take things at face value… that there is more than meets the eye (and ear).  Second, third and fourth chances are going to take the place of reactionary, split suppositions.  We all have our differences (thank goodness, it would be quite boring if we didn’t)… but we are not all that different.  It is funny what you can find out, if you just invest the time in another person and dig a little deeper.  You might find something out about yourself in the process.  What a concept.

Cynthia A. McClelland, curious observer of the obvious with interpretations of the oddities of daily life.  Mother, wife and lover of the furry, resides in the north Lake Tahoe area.

Cynthia A. McClelland © 2003-