Listening is a reflection of the heart

​When someone talks, if you are within range of their soundwaves, you have no choice but to hear them. The brain insists on it.

But to listen to someone, to hear their words and desire to make meaning of them and then reflect interest in those words, that's a matter of the heart.

A matter that IS a choice.

At the end of a long presentation this week, an older gentleman sat around in the front row patiently waiting to talk to me.

To be honest, I was tired. I was ready to begin my three-hour journey home. I didn't want to hear another word by the time the room had finally cleared and he approached me.

But something told me this gentleman needed to be heard. And listened to.

As it turns out, he wanted to share how much he appreciated my talk. He handed me a coin and a sheet of scriptures that added meaning to his gift, and then he began to tell me the history of what that coin meant to him and why he was passing it on to me.

His story wasn't completely captivating, if I'm being honest. But here's the thing, I could tell the man didn't need me to be captivated by his story, he needed me to be captivated by him.

He didn't need me to be overwhelmed by his gesture, he simply needed me to be interested in him. Because it's our desire to listen to someone that often says "I see you" to the person we're listening to.

I think too often we decide what someone has to say isn't very interesting, so we stop listening. When what that person needed was not us absorbing their words, they needed us to show a desire to listen to them.

Listening isn't the result of deciding what someone has to say is more interesting than my phone.

Listening is I value you enough as a human that I'm going to put my phone down and listen to you no matter what you have to say.

People don't feel seen because we love everything they have to say. They feel seen because we love them enough to listen no matter what they have to say.

One of our greatest human gifts is our words and our capacity to share them with one another. An even greater gift is honoring those words by not only hearing them, but listening to them.

I fear, though, the gift of our words is becoming our greatest curse. Because the more we are heard and not listened to, the more we keep to ourselves.

The more we feel alone.

Unseen.

I know it's not always easy to stop and listen. But maybe if we begin to understand what a powerful gift listening to one another is, we will make listening a stronger desire of our hearts.

Hearing isn't a choice, listening is.

Together, let's make a stronger commitment to that choice.