Those that Hear

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.  ~ Mark 4:9

We all know that hearing and listening are two different experiences, just as being heard superficially, and being listened to deeply – knowing that what you have said has been taken to heart – are profoundly different experiences.

And we also know that the emotional realities of “being heard” have nothing to do with deafness or ability: I see you. I feel you. I got you. I get it – these are all metaphors of the heart.

Sharing hard things, complex ideas, painful events that are withstood without deflection, without reduction, minimization or platitudes is a rare and sacred occurrence. And to be frank I have spent an excessive amount of time in this life talking to folks who had no psychological capacity or desire to “hear” – who had hearts with no ears.

I worked too hard to unblock what was closed off to me. I helped prepare people to eventually understand me, even if that never resulted in feeling understood.  I’d give people too many chances to prove to me that they didn’t have any heart-ears at all.

What about all those stomping on this earth ear-less, with closed hearts, closed minds? How much damage will be done? How long, how hard, how much effort must we expend to reach them? Should we exhaust ourselves trying to pry them open? Persuade them? Labor with them, listen to them deeply with our own hearts open whether it is returned or not?

I was successful at these strategies for a good long time and was often able to slide small messages through the cracks of locked doors.

“Listen, you don’t have to understand or even agree with me” I’d say. “I’m just tossing this out like a message in a bottle to float around in the back of your brain. Maybe it will wash ashore one day when you really need it or just want to try a different approach…”

I did that for a long time. It was draining.

Maybe it is a tour of duty.

Do we give up and permit ourselves to mourn when they prove they are unreachable? Closing our own hearts and ears in return?

Or just leave them be, remembering with some humility, all the ideas, all the painful, new, or complex thoughts that we have closed out, ignored, scoffed at, or that simply went over our heads?

So many ideas came into my world when I was too young, or too preoccupied, too entrenched, too threatened, or too frightened to metabolize them. I couldn’t bear to have the rug pulled out from under me. So much had already been taken.

But at this phase of life when I hear things that challenge the very premises I stand upon, I have come to enjoy the free-fall. When a culturally instilled false belief has been stripped away, I am suddenly allowed to see a wider universe, there is more air to breathe.

A sentence I hung on the walls of my high-school bedroom took me decades to accept:

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something. ~ G. B. Shaw

I’ve come to appreciate that the assumptions and beliefs stirred into my baby food, fed to me one bite at a time are poisons, prisons, weapons.  The loss of such things has come to feel strangely exhilarating, liberating.  I trust it now.

But I too often forget that others do not enjoy these little deaths, do not find them revelatory or freeing. I shouldn’t be surprised when the response is to ignore, attack, or dismiss notions that unsettle, or enrage.

When I got sick, my kids said I got “nicer and meaner” simultaneously. The rule, while on chemotherapy, was that any request from me regarding their personal or household responsibilities would be communicated “one time nicely.”  That was it. One shot. Better have your internal ears open because I had no juice to play games.

I’ve carried that out into the world with me. I’ll say something once, as clearly as I can. If the response is confusion and I don’t feel I’ve expressed myself well - I’ll offer a little clarification. But that is about it. If you don’t get me, you don’t get me. There may be no stupid questions, but it is not my responsibility to satisfy every question or confusion that crosses my path.

Let the one who has ears hear the meaning of the story ~ Mark 4:9 First Nations Version

And suddenly, somehow, I find myself at last spending most of my time speaking to compeers and colleagues who understand me, who hear the meaning of my story as clearly as I hear theirs.

It only took fifty-eight years.

But still, to speak only to those who can hear you, and to comfortably leave the others be, without defensiveness, without impatience, without expectation or sorrow or hope for more.  With peaceful acceptance that some will hear, and some will not, all while basking in the joy that anyone is able to hear at all is a grace-filled boundary, one that I may never master, but will continue to aspire to.