How Many for a Listening Tour?

On Monday, I had my creative writing students go on what I like to call a listening tour. Politicians typically do this when they are thinking about running for office; they go out into public and claim to listen to what the voters want from today's office holders. It's hard for me to imagine any politician of any party actually doing this--listening, actually holding their tongue and just letting others tell them things. I suspect that they are listening to see how much of their own message they can get to line up with what they are hearing.

I tell my students that this is something each one of them can do any time they'd like. They can decide to stop talking and start listening to what is going on around them. Part of this attempt is not just that we stop talking. Part of it is that we also quiet our minds enough so that we can hear how we are inwardly responding to everything around us. Even an hour spent like this--what most monks or mystics do most every day--can be incredibly freeing. We can really learn a great deal--about ourselves and others--just by listening.

I instructed my students to go out to the campus squares where people meet and listen for an hour and write down everything they heard. "Listen to the way people say things," I said. "Notice that we are not always direct in what we say." The hour spent in this activity is designed to get them more attuned to the way that people talk so that they can write more believable dialogue. Maybe they will continue to do this more in the future--that is, maybe they will get practiced at listening.

I have been having the same wish as I have been tuning in to social media sites lately. It seems that everyday I see various friends on Facebook and elsewhere basically talking past each other. Rather than listen to another's point of view, one friend will hear certain terms, phrases, or ideas that will serve as triggers, and then they are off on a whole series of tangents meant to be refutations for arguments they imagine they have heard else where.

This is not healthy discourse. It isn't enjoyable. It is not dialogue, which is often productive. It is noise. I refuse to engage in it. I have refused to post what I think about various issues in the news lately, even though I am strongly committed in my opinions and think I am thoughtful about them. But I don't want to be a trigger for someone else's tirade.

Instead, this week, I posted the same invitation to my Facebook and Twitter friends that I gave to my creative writing students. I posted an invitation to all to go on a "listening tour" for the day.

I am sincere about this. It's worth trying. People need me to listen these days more than they need me to talk. I am not against giving them this, and I don't care if they don't stick around to listen to me. That is not that point.

Listening is one of four literacy skills, often paired with speaking. There is reading and writing, listening and speaking. Too many people today are writing and speaking. Who is willing to read and listen? What might change if we switch our emphasis and work on the receptive side of things?

I don't think I will join the other party. But I may not see those who belong to it as the idiots, clowns, and generally bad people they are seen to be in the public discourse.

Maybe this will make our "public square," whether on Facebook or in a town hall somewhere, more worthwhile and productive.

It's worth a listen, at least.