Listening

By Lester

“The first duty of love is to listen.” – Paul Tillich

What does one hear when they go for a walk? Do they listen to all the loud cars rolling by? Does one listen to the rustling of the flourishing trees and wavering grass? Or does one have earphone stuck in the ears, taking in the sounds from their iPods that one considers music? Maybe one chooses to ignore all the noises, letting it go in one ear and out the other. Out of all of these, which one does one choose to listen to? Maybe one would choose none of these at all. It is possible that one goes for a walk for refection purposes, thinking about the incidents that occurred that day and all the possibilities of the next. Yet it is impossible to prevent one from hearing the wave of noises that flood the narrow canal we call the ears (unless one has lost their sense of hearing, of course).



Listening is such a simple activity. It takes almost no effort at all. No, let me rephrase that. Hearing is such a simple activity. Listening actually takes some effort. Many people associate the two words with the same meaning. The two have very different implications for me. Hearing is when a noise or sound enters the ears. For me personally, one doesn’t listen unless they take what they hear and actually think, consider, or act on it. Unless the action part is included, I wouldn’t consider it “listening” but hearing. We as humans hear countless sounds. Some of these sounds, we hear it but it is only noise. Listening is when one takes that noise or sound and thinks about it and related ideas, like what the sound makes us think of.

Children and teens often hear but don’t listen. They hear what their teachers say, what their parents advise, what their friends share, and what the commercials promote. But how much of these does the average teenager or child actually take in and listen to? It is applicable, even to adults. Everyone has a tendency to hear but not listen. From personal experience, the best athletes, students and workers are those who listen to their superiors, like coaches, teachers and bosses, and take the advice they give. I coach a group of young boys in gymnastics. We recently went to a pretty big competition with a lot of tough competitors; two of my young athletes took medals. These two are the ones who listened to me and the corrections I have to give to them. The other boys hear what I have to say to them, but they never change anything because they don’t listen. My personal philosophy for coaching gymnastics is that if one works hard and uses their ears, they can go far in the sport. If one has a great ambition but doesn’t listen, they will be mediocre. And if one doesn’t have any desire to do something, then they should just stop and find something they like. Something that really just bugs me is when the kids just goof around and mess around, not listening when I tell them to get back to work.

In many cultures, parents take the ears of rebellious children and twist it as a sign of punishment when the child doesn’t listen. This is a very fitting punishment for kids who can’t seem to use their ears. This punishment probably started because a parent wanted their child to listen but they couldn’t seem to, so they decided to try to enlarge the ears in hopes of causing the child to listen more because of the increased amount of words that can rush through the ears. In one African myth, it is believed that the elephant gained its large ears because of its inability to listen.




Ignorant people get on my nerves. When one can’t see a perspective from a different point of view, they are essentially shutting down the ears of their heart. They don’t seem to hear the other side of the point. I like to be like a judge in a court case; I try to hear both perspectives of the same story before taking a side. Conformists and people pleasers also annoy me, especially those who agree with everything that people say, even if two of the ideas contradict each other. There is this one person at school who especially gets on my nerves. Once I heard this person talking to someone else about some controversial subject; I don’t remember the subject. But after they finished talking, this person started talking to me. So I decided to try to see if I could get this person to disagree with me. I take up the opposing side that this person was agreeing upon with their friend. This person just started to agree with everything I said, even though it went against some other the other stuff that this person was agreeing with before! People like that just really aggravate me.

Listening and hearing are two everyday life processes. Depending on how we use the ears shapes the way one lives. One can choose to learn, understand, and evaluate the sounds. Or one can choose to be ignorant, foolish, and uninformed. The sense of audio perception can be such a blessing or it can be like a picture frame that collects dust due to infrequent use.