We talk a lot and occasionally to good ends. Perhaps we do not appreciate our communicating gifts, in part because speech is so pervasive. And listening so scarce!
Grasshoppers hum out to their fellows with rapid strokes of antennae or wings. Ants deposit a pheromone trail for safekeeping: to guide and elude predators and pursue food sources. Pheromones you may have heard are also pretty good for attracting mates! Safety, food and sex are high stakes for tiny creatures and big ones too. One wonders why insects are so good at communicating even as humans can be pretty darn bad at it. Perhaps, unlike us, grasshoppers truly hear the sounds of their sidekicks.
When did talking rise to the pinnacle of our social experience? When did listening descend to a postscript? Our world of Talkers seems to louden after each Tech advance from telephones, to the internet, to social media. Such cacophony! Now most everyone has a platform, demanding influence, likes and listeners. But with everyone expressing, no one is left to be receptive, to receive; to bear witness.
The Psychotherapy Room occupies a sacred space in this communication paradigm. It’s blessed like a Priest’s Confessional or the Sacred Circle of a Shaman or like going alone to the teacher in Dokusan. Special communications join and knowledges exchange. Listening is integral. Clients in psychotherapy enjoy, muddle through, and struggle with these exchanges. But there prevails a special overarching experience: to be heard, to be witnessed. Some clients realize that whether by family or by friends or by colleagues they have never or only rarely been heard. Think of it! And then ponder about how increasingly normalized this tragedy has become in our world of Talkers.
Ironically, the deep desire to be heard elevates loquacity. The more we want to be heard the more we seem to speak. And the more conversations take place in vitro (of the mind) and not in vivo. Inner monologues and dialogs are fine only if they do not displace communicating with another: I-Thou versus I-I. Picture a world of neurotics mistaking interior me-to-me conversations for the real thing.
This delusion has exploded today across social media mirages. Ours has become an asocial and lonely world. Legions have turned away from their human counterparts only to nuzzle with human illusions transmitted on smart-phones. Many more will look to artificial intelligence and chatbots to try to nourish social and belonging needs. But there is no there there. Tiny pockets of society are already collapsing because of it…youngsters are more vulnerable but all are at risk. We are starving for each other.
Sometimes, when things fall apart, opportunity arises for something new. Perhaps we now arrive at such place and such a time; a time to be still and listen deeply; to gaze into the eyes of another; to smile… and give a gentle hug.
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