Tag: listening

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Respectful Summer Get Togethers

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Messages that feel like commands – even good advice coming from a friend- aren’t always received well. If you feel like you’re being pushed into a corner, you’re more likely to push back.

Elena Renken

Most stories being told around the world right now seem to share several common distressing themes. Inflation and what is driving it. The war in Ukraine. The Pope’s apology to Canadian residential school survivors. Heat waves creating unbearable conditions in parts of the world that normally don’t have them. Fires, droughts, floods all predictable as a result of our continued environmental destruction.

And then the predictable debates about who, what, and how we should address climate action.

Affordable housing crisis, food insecurity, moving into a recession, extraordinary gas prices, and of course the ever present supply chain issues. Gun violence. School shootings. Grocery store shootings. Mall shootings. Continued anger about Covid vaccine mandates and the odd, lingering protest about public health guidelines. Populist political bullying, dismantling women’s right to choose, coupled with a full on attack on “woke” culture.

And you’ll never guess who’s back delivering mayhem and ridiculous soundbites cause he got raided by the FBI?

The stories we are telling each other range from angry conflict that sometimes disintegrates into outright chaos all the way to a senseless war across the ocean. This polarizing rhetoric gains traction as people are not feeling heard and from dangerous people who then take license to impose their will through bullying behaviour or use of force.

When did we stop listening to each other. Agreeing to disagree. Respecting democratic institutions that we have taken pride in building. Collectively. Collaboratively. It seems so far away from the world I thought I knew. Disenfranchised people whose demands across social media are no longer about civil society but about individuals rights and freedoms.

What does that actually mean? When I hear the word freedom right now, I know my personal definition can’t be similar to fellow Canadians who decided to disrupt and destroy the narrative most familiar to me. Horns blaring because Freedom. My freedom trumps yours.

How do I listen to their stories and really hear them?

Would anything make it easier for them to hear my stories?

All stories matter and have the potential to shape attitudes that colour our views on relationships, politics, and our society. But they have little meaning when we stop listening to one another. And when we also stop caring about the importance of the stories that each of us needs to tell.

It seems bizarre that at a time when we need to come together to address so many challenges that we keep moving far apart.

But there are glimmers of hope. Right?

I can’t help but remain hopeful that the celebrations we have this summer have mostly remained respectful of the stories that each one of us carries in our hearts. No matter how different it seems from our value base and moral codes.

We have a long ways to go but if we all learn to listen a little more, we just might make the upcoming fall and winter a different story than the one told last year.

Stay happy and safe this summer!

Featured

Listening to the stories of others

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Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

Karl. A. Menninger

It is a rare moment when we are afforded the opportunity to listen deeply to the stories that others have to tell. Most typically, our listening skills become dull and impotent as we age, when the stressors in our lives loom large and bloat. When the incessant news spin that we all seem to gravitate towards, churns on relentlessly spitting out negativity. But when those golden opportunities present themselves to listen to the stories others are telling, it both elevates and transports us.

Last week, I had the privilege to attend the launch event for the reading of my stories published in a literary magazine. Along with more than a dozen other writers. Albeit nervous and out of practice attending public events, I was thrilled to be a part of it. The venue chosen had a serene and sacred atmosphere, quietly understated and elegant. A perfect space for the telling of stories created deep within so many hearts.

Sitting, masked in an audience of peers, fellow creatives and aficionados of the writing arts, sent shivers of excitement up my spine. But I quickly found myself drawn to the readings of every writer that night in a manner that I can only describe as magnetic. Each story, spoken through the voice of the creator, seemed so vibrant it was as if the words shimmered and then planted themselves deep within me.

Listening is a skill that I realize I often take for granted. Hearing these stories live not only moved me in unexpected ways but brought home the fact that listening deeply to what others have to share doesn’t happen often. There are times when a life lesson taps you on the shoulder when you least expect it and you know you must pay heed to it.

Perhaps as I move more bravely out into the world, it is time to seek out more opportunities to hear the readings of creative work. So I can again, listen with intent and heart to hear the stories shared by those around me.

Stay safe, happy listening!

Learning to accept the roller coaster of emotions

Photo by L Meyer

Emotions are celebrated and repressed, analyzed and medicated, adored and ignored – but rarely, if ever, are they honoured

Karla McLaren

Being successful in the management of one’s feelings is an ongoing process. Few of us ever reach that vaulted and imaginary finish line, where we have mastered times of inner emotional turbulence. Most of us endure times where we might struggle in managing some of the more difficult emotions that humans experience. It is challenging during these ongoing stressful times to not periodically fall into a dark, dangerous pit of negativity or a false, shrill sense of pseudo optimism often referred to as “toxic positivity”.

Having become more isolated from face to face interpersonal interactions during the “third” wave, it can seem overwhelming to sort out the day to day emotional roller coaster ride that at times seems as if we are hanging on by the tips of our fingers. When we do see people important in our lives, it is all too easy to gloss over or avoid expressing our authentic but unpleasant emotions.

For a period of time, many people were describing the “silver linings” that they were finding during the pandemic. Some of these were profound but many so called silver linings could only be described as inane. But the reality for most of us seems to have become a suspension in time. Where we might be simply languishing. Waiting without an understanding of what might happen next. Finding the future path forward muddied and unclear, along with a plethora of feelings – both negative and positive ones. Some okay and some not so okay.

But they are just feelings. Fleeting moments of emotion that we can learn to manage. The urge we might have when confronted by negative feelings is to outrun them, subdue them, numb them, and this is something that many of us experience but struggle to acknowledge. Fear of pushing others away when we need them the most leads us at times, to downplay those moments when we are experiencing negative feelings.

Humans struggle to listen to one another at the best of times. During the worst of times, this becomes a critical skill to support those we love and care about. Creating opportunities for the expression of emotions regardless of what they are, is a kindness that we could all use more of. Easing the hardship of times where emotional expression is a struggle for someone may be an unexpected gift.

Finding our way forward to accept that emotions are fluid, both positive and negative, and that we all share them as a part of our human experience can only be a good thing. Having a world full of people who will listen to what you need too share, is an even better thing.

Stay healthy and safe!

Listen carefully

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I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Ernest Hemingway

Reading news feeds over the past couple of days reveals that on a global level we are not using our ability to listen to one another. There is a constant cacophony of voices aggressively demanding to be heard. Political rhetoric is ramping up, the anxiety of re-opening and returning to school and work is significantly heightened, and people everywhere seem to be shouting at each other.

Listening is a skill that we have to work at and today it seems to be at risk of becoming lost as we collectively demand that others meet our needs. Stepping back, it seems nonsensical that politicians have to resort to shaming us into following public health orders in an effort to keep us safe. Public health doctors who are working tirelessly on our communal behalf, are now having to hire security as their lives are being threatened.

I wonder what it will take for us to learn to listen to one another. It seems that there is no time but the present for humans to work at this particular life skill.

Take the time today to notice the simple task of listening. Are the people in your world hearing your voice? Are you reciprocating and hearing the voices of others before reacting and responding to them? We are constantly and consistently being told to follow some basic strategies to move through this pandemic in the safest possible way.

Our future outcomes seem to depend on a simple yet difficult to achieve skill – listening to one another. Imagine what could happen if all of the people around us would actually take the time to truly listen to what is being shared about the need for everyone of us to follow some basic guidelines.

It is going to take a collective global effort of working together to move through this pandemic. That likely means setting aside some of our needs in order to keep others in our communities safe.

And it will start with all of us taking the time to listen to others around us about how to achieve this.

Stay healthy and safe!