Talk

I'm not sure anymore who wrote it, but when I read it I agreed.  The point was made that, while we are awake, we are always in conversation with ourselves, another or God.  I am pretty sure it was a notable theologian making the statement, but even if understood in an entirely secular manner, isn't it psychologically true?  Aren't we always talking or listening during our waking hours?


My Dad talked a lot, and so do I.  I did not really blame my Dad, but even when i was  seventeen I had enough self-awareness to know that we were similarly flawed.   So when a retreatmaster said that in ten years I'd be what I was then only more so,  I was forewarned!  I was also a little scared.  It's not that I then succeeded in talking less, but I think I began learning how to listen more.  In fact, skilled listening became one of the most essential elements of my spiritual and professional life.


Nevertheless, I know that longtime friends (and acquaintances)  have intentionally and heroically survived my monologues long enough for dialogue to emerge or reemerge.  For this I am  extremely thankful.  In fact, I am still  heartened by the quite kind and insightful  defense or apologia a close friend once made on my behalf:  she just wants to be thorough!  He knew that I went through a forest of details but that it was purposeful and I somehow needed to do that.  He also sometimes found it a crazy-making experience, but he had  gained  insight  and forbearance because of our friendship.  In fact, as he chided me less often for this fault, he helped me carry the burden of it.  That's what friends do.


So as I thought about the oddities of various kinds of discourse, and how people try to communicate thoughts with words, talk, conversation and  writing, I began to differentiate between kinds of discourse. I also recalled some of the dynamics of listening, for example,  the emotion I  experienced  when I "heard" a friend's eyes glaze over during a phone call, when the focus was no longer directed onto my friend's concerns.  When I had been a good and sympathetic listener, but  found  my concerns abruptly dismissed with, "I really have to go now..."  I knew that In the big picture I certainly deserved being cut off.  And since I've  been responsible for so many lopsided conversations, I have no right to complain.  But I noticed not being heard, and then I also learned something.   


Who said what?  When was it said?  Why did they say it?  Where and how was it heard? I  ask such questions when catching up on the news or when trying to find out about something important to me. True, these days  I have many options and resources for information  and for sharing my thoughts.  And I also have easy access to thinkers of the past and present.  My laptop and internet connection are tools for research and expression and I have only begun to tap the possibilities they offer.  But I already know the fabulous feeling of shouting, as it were,  my scorn for the demagoguery so pervasive in the current political process, even if I just tweet it into cyberspace where I have zero followers!  


And yes, it comforts me to know and to say that demagoguery is the politicians' tool of choice, used precisely for gaining power and arousing emotions and prejudice!  When I forget this, my outrage at all the preposterous promises and false logic can be rather unsettling.  And  so I engage in an exercise of comparing and contrasting different forms of "talk":  monologue v. dialogue, pedagogy v. demagogy, oratory v. homiletics, talk v. silence.  Any useful conclusions ?  Yes, of course, I say to myself and to another and to God!  


Indisputably,  "talk" possibilities are exceedingly diverse nowadays.  Whether  annoyingly boring or bombastic, whether geared to provide comic relief, consolation, distraction, drama, diversion, entertainment, education, empathy, political "spin" or spiritual insight, talk begs for a hearing.  And so I ask myself:   When did I really listen? How many chances have I lost? Or conversely, when was I really heard? When did I say something that mattered?  What singular experience of being heard  (or not being heard) is most poignant for me? 


Well, there was that time danger threatened when someone in grief knew where I lived and made unreasonable demands for an art piece, a work-in-progress, that had involved his loved one.  I knew it was advisable to hand over the work , but it was an unfinished creative effort and it was mine.  The sacrifice I'd be making was acknowledged by those who acted as intermediaries, but until a fellow artist heard my saga it seemed that no one had really listened and understood what I was surrendering.   But I can never forget :  at least one person knew I was losing a part of myself and that made it a little easier to let go. 


Talk? Listen?  Yes, I say to myself, and to another out in cyberspace, and to God!  It  energizes me to  explore and acknowledge diversity, opportunity, challenge and even change.  But I admit that achieving balance, or maintaining perspective about the sometimes cartoonish and superficial successes headlined in our culture is not easy.  I suppose it's sort of like struggling to hear the whisper of a gentle breeze.  Who does that anymore?  


I was certainly talking  way before my memory of saying anything,  and there's no telling when I'll stop .  This said, I suspect I was always  more intuitive than precocious, and  because I know it's vital to pause for a deep breath now and then, I will leash my talk, take it for a walk and let someone else get a word in edgewise!