MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
Listen Up<\/p>\n
Being with a good listener is a rare and wonderful thing. It\u2019s\u00a0gratifying and comforting when someone really listens to you. You feel\u00a0satisfied, heard, supported and understood. On the other hand, it feels not so\u00a0good when the other person is so busy composing the next thing he or she wants\u00a0to say, they don’t hear you at all. They\u2019re distracted and you can tell they\u00a0aren\u2019t listening or maybe they just don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
I have a cousin who talks so fast and furiously, she\u00a0literally chokes herself. There are no pauses in her discourse, I can\u2019t get a\u00a0word in and I feel like I have to fight with her for room to talk. I recall a\u00a0dinner with her one night when I found myself spacing out to such a degree,\u00a0when I got back to the present moment, I had no idea what she was talking about\u00a0or how long I\u2019d been gone. When dinner was over, I was exhausted and I stepped\u00a0back from the relationship. If I had to disappear when someone was speaking, if\u00a0I felt isolated and distant, if being with someone else was less interesting than\u00a0being alone, there was no good reason for me to waste my precious time.<\/p>\n
I remember a party when I was telling an acquaintance asked\u00a0me about how much I enjoyed my writing career. As I spoke, he got a far away\u00a0look on his face and when I was finished, he said, \u201cSo tell me about your\u00a0writing. I started writing a book once. Maybe I should finish it. It was pretty\u00a0good, at least that\u2019s what my friends told me and I think they were right.\u201d I was\u00a0having a dialogue but he was having a monologue with no room for me. I went to\u00a0find someone else to talk to.<\/p>\n
Back in the nineteen eighties, I volunteered at Chris\u00a0Brownlie AIDS hospice where there were 26 beds and 26 dying men. It was before
the life saving cocktail and I went from room to room to sit with each resident\u00a0to see what he needed and wanted. There was someone in particular whom I will\u00a0never forget. I checked his records and learned that he had bone cancer and\u00a0AIDS. How could anyone deal with that? I hesitated at his open door. \u201cHello,\u201d I\u00a0said, \u201cMay I come in?\u201d He gazed at me calmly and said, \u201cYes. Please do.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat in the chair beside his bed, he put out his hand, I\u00a0took it, and he said. \u201cToo many volunteers just barge right into my room\u00a0without asking permission. When they sit with me, they start talking a blue
streak and tell me what I ought to do. I like to smoke a cigarette once in a\u00a0while and yesterday, a volunteer scolded me about how dangerous it was and how I\u00a0needed to stop. I sent him away. I don’t have very long in this world and I\u00a0don’t intend to spend my last days in depravation. There\u2019s nothing anyone can\u00a0say or do that will fix or change my situation. All I want is for someone to\u00a0look at me and listen to me. To really hear me. To respect my space, both
physically and emotionally.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was volunteer training 101. When I left his room, I had\u00a0said very little and I had gained a vast amount of knowledge. I carried on with
my volunteer work over the next few years and it became easier because I knew\u00a0what to do. I sat and I listened \u201cIs there something I can do for you?\u201d was one\u00a0of the only questions I asked. One man said that he wanted to make sure someone\u00a0was holding his hand when he died. I told the other volunteers, we took shifts\u00a0and he got what he wanted. Another wanted to take a shower every day and a male\u00a0volunteer helped him do that. One of the residents had his Cuban mother visit\u00a0and she invited me to his room for sandwiches Cubano and Arroz y Frijoles\u00a0Negros.<\/p>\n
When we have a difficult or confusing choice to make, we\u00a0often want to run it by someone but we don’t want them to tell us what to do.\u00a0We want them to listen and become a sounding board that will shed light on our\u00a0situation so we can decide what would be best for us. If someone barges in with\u00a0an unsolicited opinion, it will only cause us to become defensive and we won\u2019t\u00a0trust our vulnerability with them any more. I make it a habit to refrain from\u00a0giving my opinion unless someone asks for it directly. Even then, I have no\u00a0attachment to whether not they do what I suggest. My hospice days taught me
that allowing people their dignity, no matter what I think about their choices,\u00a0is the best way to listen and support them as we all maneuver an uncertain\u00a0world in the best of times and in the worst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG Listen Up Being with a good listener is a rare and wonderful thing. It\u2019s\u00a0gratifying and comforting when someone really listens to you. You feel\u00a0satisfied, heard, supported and understood. On the other hand, it feels not so\u00a0good when the other person is so busy composing the next thing he or she wants\u00a0to say, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}