Monday, February 19, 2018

How To Listen

Similarly to how Inuit (a subset of Eskimo) has ten different words for snow, I've always relied on my enormous vocabulary to communicate with acute precision, because the English lexicon allows me to do that. It gets in the way of everyday conversation in two particular ways:
1. Nobody can understand me, or they tune out.
2. People take offense and think I'm posturing, and then condescending when I clarify.

To get around this, I think in Spanish or Japanese, because my vocabulary is a seedling to the mighty oak of my English command. The problems with this are that I then have to translate back to English, which I can't always do on the fly, or, that a metaphor or cultural reference doesn't make sense across the translation.

To get around that, I shut up. And while this may be my best method when the topic is inconsequential, it's the death of my own voice for that interaction.

My Sensei recently taught me that, if I want to be heard, I need to listen.

Being told to "listen" has always hurt like a punch to the face. Having been unilaterally deaf all my life, and never having had support for it during my developmental years, I still miss out on a LOT of information that is delivered as auditory exchange.

I've adapted like a lion to fill in for some unknown percentage of teachers' lectures, instructions, and incidental learning. I made myself strong in phonics and the faces people make when I'm speech reading. I became a polyglot to understand accents and grammatical sentence structures, which helped me understand my Italian-American family better. I learned sign language.

Deafness has a lot to do with my attraction to books because I can read a page any number of times,  take notes, and review. I can check my work against written instructions, and hand my work to someone else in a non-verbal exchange.

When I am asked to "listen," I have to take a breath because I can feel my body freezing up. I ask myself, "is this person asking me to hear them, to stop interrupting them, or to agree with them?" This has been a good practice overall, but in a discourse it's not a good time to not be able to hear. I have the lower hand and it will often cost me the row.

When you have anything more than mild hearing loss, you can't interpret auditory information in real time while also:
considering the point that has been made to you;
formulating an opinion;
forming an argument to support your opinion
forming and delivering the verbal response, and
getting ready to hear the beginning of the next exchange.

Communication is hard. I've long since taken responsibility for that little sting when I'm asked to "listen." I know it's there, I know why it's there, and it's one of yesterday's feelings that needs care, but is not related to the conversation at hand. I came to this point only after I finally had the hearing supports I needed and learned my own strength.

To listen does not mean to accept as fact, to internalize, or to otherwise acquiesce. It just means to let the other person speak. I am still working on not interrupting, because I don't like being interrupted. But with hearing loss I have to simultaneously work on auditory memory because I can't always stop to take notes (e.g., in karate).

So if you have anything you want to tell me, write it down. ;) Ha!

There are MMA fighters who scream and carry on to intimidate their opponents and to rile up the crowds. Other fighters say nothing and stay focused. Who's to say which is right? Neither carrying on nor staying silent indicates a winner. But, in the words of Audre Lorde, "Your silence will not protect you."

This blog post didn't end up as cohesive as I'd like, but I hope it's given you some thoughts about what it means to listen, and what it means to speak up. Both are important, especially in the case of those who cannot speak for themselves, or who are not heard.

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