My Word Of The Year
My word of the year is listen.
It’s one of those words whose meaning is in its music. Listen is a quiet word, that half swallowed L and diffident I and softly hissing S. It defies the clamorous words it absorbs, the words that have defined this year, the shouts and roars, the bray and bluster. Listening is hard when the sounds around us grow mean and ugly.
And listening takes particular courage in divisive times.
“Courage is not just about standing up for what you believe,” Doug Elmendorf tells his students at Harvard. “Sometimes courage is about sitting down and listening to what you may not initially believe.”
Which is not to say that if we all just listened more, our wounds would heal and our conflicts end. Nor does it mean abandoning our values; it’s a strategic reminder of the value of humility. “It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth,” theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said. Listening, closely and bravely, to an opposing view deepens our insight and sharpens our arguments—especially in our public life.
It’s long past time that we quiet our animal spirits. Our fierce public battles, political fights that have infected our friendships and family, have degraded our discourse, defaced institutions, disturbed our peace. I grew up in Quaker schools, which included regular silent meetings. This did not come naturally to nine-year-olds. But I found then, and need to be reminded now, that we can’t hear the soft, sane voice inside us if we’re talking all the time, and certainly not if we’re shouting.
Instead, let’s listen. Invite surprise. Invest in subtlety. And surrender to silence once in a while.
What do you make of seeking 'the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth?' Can you tell a personal story of a time you were able to deepen your insight by listening, closely and bravely, to an opposing view? What helps you to invite surprise into your life?
If you re-arrange the letters of the word "listen"...these same letters spell the English word "silent." A good way to remember a key aspect to listening.
Thank you so much for bringing to our attention the importance of listening. It reminds me of the value of listening not only with our ears, but also with our body language, our facial expressions, our minds, our hearts, and our overall attentive yet noninvasive presence. To be and do this feels like a practice and artform whose ultimate gift is to create a safe space for another to speak and to be heard, which is to be seen and known. I'm not sure we can give or receive much greater a gift than that. To listen so wholeheartedly requires the discipline to withold one's own opinions, solutions and answers, to consider those of another, and to dwell in the space of uknowning inbetween where the two meet and often begin a new and much needed conversation - with or without words. New dialogues born out of listening! Count me in! Thank you again for the great post and inspiration for the New Year!
"It’s long past time that we quiet our animal spirits." In my truth, it is those very spirits that humble us and help us to listen, to all that is around AND within us. It is long past time that we call all that we wish to silence and separate from, "animal". It is the very act of silencing that prevents true hearing because while we are busy telling ourselves that our inner "animal" must listen, that we are not actually listening. What I have discovered is that it is precisely my inner soft animal spirit that is most intrinsically connected with the common needs of all beings, no matter the form their bodies or minds present. And until I fully feel that connection to our common needs, I am only hearing the story I have about the story I hear.
