Just Listen to Me, Man!

 Just listen to me, man!

When it comes to my wife’s perception of me as an engaged listener, she often tells me that I do not do a good job of listening to her. I suppose that there might be some truth to that matter. While I feel that I do a decent job of listening to her for the most part, I will admit that there are other times when she’s trying to get my attention in passing and what she is saying to me goes in one ear and out the other. This October marked our 18th year together, and this December will see us arrive at our 14th wedding anniversary. You would think that after all those years that I would have mastered the art of listening well to a woman, but what can I say? I am a work in progress!

My generation has the unique distinction of having grown up in both an analog and digital world. As a child growing up in the 80s, we did not have nearly the number of distractions that today’s children are faced with. There were no iPads, iPods, cell phones, headphones connected to Netflix, or any other number of distractions that demand the attention of today’s children. No, the world was a simpler place, and I am grateful to have grown up in a world that was more analog than it was digital.

Unlike my brother, who buys the latest and greatest iPhone every year, I have never been one to put much stock in buying a fancy, high-priced "fruit flavored" electronic device. No, I typically buy a cheap, carrier unlocked cell phone off Amazon and rock it for two or three years until it either A.) becomes too obsolete to use, B.) the battery dies, or C.) I inadvertently end up breaking it. When I arrive at A, B, or C, I simply get on Amazon and order another cheap cell phone and repeat the cycle all over again. Although my cell phone may be cheap, I still try to take care of it to the best of my ability. Of course, I always keep it ensconced in a good quality case and generally keep a glass screen protector on top of the screen.

A couple of weeks ago, I took the family to the farm for a fun fall day, and while I was there, someone bumped into me which caused me to drop my cell phone as I was taking a picture of my son. When it dropped, the phone fell face down onto a small rock which cracked the glass screen protector. When I got home, I removed the screen protector and discarded it to make sure that the actual screen was still fine. Although I initially thought I had an extra spare screen protector in the closet, it turned out that I did not. So, I promptly got on Amazon and ordered another one only to find out that it would not arrive for five days. Not wanting to risk damaging my “cheap” phone or risk scratching my “cheap phone’s screen,” I decided to forgo taking my phone with me to work for the week, and instead forwarded all calls to the landline in my office. I also forwarded all my texts to my chrome book, also in my office. Over the course of that week, I found that two things magically happened. 

First, I felt liberated! I did not have that little rectangular block sitting on my desk distracting me with its constant blinking, chiming, and buzzing signaling the hundreds of infernal, nefarious notifications that the stupid thing spews forth many times in a day. Instead, if anyone needed to reach me, they could call the phone which would in turn ring the landline, or text me and I would receive the text on my chrome book. It was such a blessed relief.

The second thing that I found happened was that I was a heck of a lot more focused throughout the week. Without a phone lying around constantly tempting me to check it every few minutes, I was so much more productive. I felt free! It was a great week, and I felt that the experiment was a huge success.

Cell phones, for me, have proven to be both a blessing and a curse. Today, we are constantly in touch with everyone around us, but we have also “lost touch” with those who are right in front of us. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are so distracted and so involved in what’s on that little 5- or 6-inch screen (that I sometimes feel is the spawn of Satan). I remember some years ago when my wife and I were traveling back from Florida one summer. This was in the days before we had a son of our own. We stopped in Hattiesburg and ate at one of our old haunts from our college years, and happily engaged in a wonderful time of reminiscing as we ate our meal. Even before we had a kid, my wife and I always made it a priority to never have electronics at the dinner table. We felt that doing so would distract us from our time together. As we ate our meal that night, we observed the family sitting across from us; it consisted of a mom, dad, and three small children. During the entire meal, the mom and the dad never looked up from their phones one single time. The kids were very animated while trying to get the parent's attention, and the parents promptly proceeded to ignore them for the entire time sans for occasionally telling them to be quiet. The parents did not speak to each other, nor did they speak to any of the three children. I remember leaving the restaurant that night so pissed that two parents would have done that to their children, and I remember telling my wife that if we ever had any children, that we would never behave like that.

Fast-forward and I now have an eight-year-old son who does his best to drive me to drink some days with his incessant talking. But you know what? Dinner time for us is family time and no matter how much I want to veg out sometimes and disengage from everything around me, my wife and I always make dinner family time a priority whether we are eating at home in our kitchen or eating out at a restaurant. We have a family rule of no electronics at the table, and this includes my son as well. We take turns talking and listening to each other. We engage. We give each other our undivided attention.

When I am having a one-on-one discussion with someone such as a conversation over coffee or lunch with someone, I always make it a priority to not have anything in front of me that would potentially distract me from the conversation taking place. If that means leaving my phone in my office or in my car, so be it. Even though my adult ADHD brain sometimes jumps all over the place and my mind may be a million miles away when it actually appears that I’m listening to a person, I am still giving my best effort to be an active, engaged listener!

One of the things that I love about my small Samson group that I have been going to for several years is that each of the guys in the group is a wonderful listener. Or at least...he pretends to be a wonderful listener! We typically don’t have any distractions such as cell phones in front of us, and we each give the others in the group our full and undivided attention when that particular person is speaking. Because of this dynamic, I feel like I am being heard, and therefore I am more likely to be open, transparent, and honest with others within the group. I feel validated, and I feel like my sharing is important and worth something. In turn, I make sure that I am doing my best to listen to each of the other guys in the group; as I said earlier, my ADHD brain sometimes zooms off into the wild blue yonder, but I quickly reign it back in and make sure that my focus returns to where it needs to be: the person sharing in front of me. I remember a particularly disheartening experience that I had early on in another Samson group (that I never felt particularly comfortable in). During my time of sharing on one particular night, there was one gentleman who happened to be sitting right across from me. As he was sitting across from me, I happened to notice that he remained engaged in social media the entire time that I was sharing that night. Now, I could understand if he had received an important text that he needed to respond to, but no, that was not the case. He had his phone face up laying on the table where he proceeded to scroll through his Facebook feed the entire time that I was sharing. I cannot begin to describe how awful I felt that night. Even though it was probably nothing personal against me, it made me feel worthless and not validated, almost as if what I had to share did not matter one bit. From that point forward, every time I saw that man in the room, I clammed up. Sure, I probably shared something, but I can almost guarantee you that it was all superficial and nothing meaningful.

In a previous post, I have briefly talked about my friend from high school and from college who now lives in Nashville with his family. He has been through a lot in life including brain surgery back in 2019. For the most part, he is okay but there are still some ways in which he will never be the same. I was able to see him this past summer when he and his family came to my house for a few days, and he and I were able to go on several adventures together and just hang around like old times and catch up. On the night before he was to depart to head back to Nashville, he and I were sitting in the swing on my front porch just reminiscing about old times and the way things were when we were in high school and in college. I don’t know what it was about that night; perhaps I felt safe in the dusk of the evening with the frogs croaking and the crickets chirping all around me; or, maybe for perhaps the first time in ever, I felt truly safe around my friend. Whatever the case, I opened up to my friend. I mean I really opened up to him. I told him my story. Outwardly, it appeared that he was listening and he was nodding and giving me every indication that he was hearing what I was saying. I don’t know what led to me sharing my story, but I did, and I was trying to help him understand why I was the way that I was in high school and in college – sometimes distant and unable to be a good friend to him. Sharing my story was very painful as it always tends to be, and I could feel the hot tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. As I wrapped up my story, I sat there in silence for a few moments just processing all that I had talked about. Suddenly my friend said, “okay, why don’t we go inside and see what everyone else is doing?” I was absolutely devastated. I mean, after all, I had just finished pouring my heart out to him. I told him to go on inside and I would catch up with him later. Later, I made him aware of what he had done, and he was somewhat apologetic and asked me to re-share my story with him. I refused. I told him that that moment had come and gone.

That was in July, and it is now November. We still keep in touch, but I no longer make the great effort that I once did to ensure that our relationship stays close and our bond strong. If he texts me, I will respond in a very non-committal/disengaged manner. I have purposely been very distant. Yes, I am aware that God requires forgiveness, and I forgave him a long time ago, but it does not mean that the hurt is gone. I am trying to get over it, I really am. Most guys don’t take things as personally as I do, or wear their hearts on their sleeves. Past trauma in my life as well as my story tends to dictate how I react to certain situations a lot of times. I’m getting better; truly, I have worked on myself a lot the last couple of years and I really am in a better place than I have been in a long time. But certain situations still trigger those old feelings of rejection, abandonment, and resentment. I will always love my friend, but I will most likely never share my story with him again. For starters, I don’t think he was able to handle it or process it. Perhaps, he wasn’t even paying attention. And secondly, it’s just not something I feel like I can handle going through again.

I am aware of and I fully understand that there are various levels of transparency in the sharing that takes place between two people (or multiple people). This degree of transparency is largely dependent on how comfortable they are in their relationship with each other. I will leave you with this: whether you are engaged in the midst of a deep conversation with someone or you’re simply having a light-hearted chat about life over a cup of coffee, take the time to really give someone the gift of your undivided attention, and make the effort to really listen to what they have to say. Everyone wants to be heard. Everyone wants to feel like they are worth something and what they have to say matters. Be that person who listens. That person who TRULY listens.