Howdy,
Yesterday I went simple, very minimal, with the post, “There, I did it (or, Drop the mic … and listen).”
Today I reuse a part of that post’s title: “Drop the mic … and listen.” And I’m doing that because I added an important part to the discussion on a question being the answer. The part about listen.
Listen. Listening.
“Listening lines up questions, and questions link up listening.”
Now, that is the challenge in this whole thing about finding—patiently and skillfully, I dare say, masterfully, discovering—an answer: listening.
Thus, yesterday’s super short post served no less than two important points: 1) Proving that I could just post that small bit without a rambling explanation (though, I suppose that I’d have to admit it already had an intro from the previous day and that I’m following up now, so I also supposed I have to agree to this idea as being disingenuous without much of a fight), and 2) I brought in the notion of listening in yesterday’s title’s additional, parenthetical, labeling—in a place that it needn’t be, with no explanation, no mention in the longer post the day before and nothing about it in yesterday’s minimal post, just a line: about questions and answers, not listening.
But that’s the point, listening is so powerful, such an integral part of the answers from questions connection. Listening plows and plants the fertile field for questions and questions—truthful, caring questions—presuppose, or should, and require listening.
Listening lines up questions, and questions link up listening. That’s the sync, if you think about it.
That is, if this is going to work. And we need it to, because we’ve seen that it may be we find ourselves in a situation where great answers are spoken deftly but also deafly. Not to be heard.
But that’s the hard part, too: listening. We’re so much better at talking, at holding the mic up high, to our moving lips, mouthing answers. Answers that make sense to us, from our perspective into another person’s life: a life we may not see as clearly as we pridefully think.
Want to know more about that other person’s life—maybe later to speak insight into their existence, and maybe an improving one—than ask questions, and listen to what he tells you; take in what she is sharing; ask another question.
Why? Because …
A question is the answer.
I hope I’m listening to myself here with this, because I find this so difficult to master—to start, to learn, to employ, to improve upon—because if I listen, it’s not long before I’m ready to talk. Dispersing that sage wisdom I so like to hear myself uttering from my own experience (that isn’t exactly the other person’s). I know this. I know that a question being the answer, but I talk. I tell. And I watch it not make a great difference. So I retrospect, and I say, hey, a question would have been good there (duh)—and my wife, who really is wise, agrees (hopefully not too often with my “duh,” but with the insight that a question would have served.
So, my advice, put a question on a platter, and pitch the platitude as stale, maybe spoiled, possibly even toxic. How can I ask that as a question? That’d be more effective.
Wouldn’t it be a wonder to watch our words work in the mind of another in a way we can downright witness the wheels clicking and whirling, spinning a web of wisdom intricately designed to an individual’s life to a geared level you and I could never dream, brainstorm, draw up with the plan’s of a talented life architect, or ever introduce with another largely ignored* paragraph of wordy wisdom? Wouldn’t it be a wonder?
Listening is a wonder … but I’m ready to wonder, to tune my ears to it, to hear, and to speak words in observations that can be heard. A wonder.
I’ve said enough. You know that answer to this question: a wonderful mystery …?
A question is the answer.
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Listening.
*“Ignored” is not negative on the recipient in need; in such cases I imagine a more fair view of this could be “likely under-heard or underutilized,” because … what do we really expect? It’s on us, the wordy ones with the stockpiles of answers. “Likely” in front of “under-heard” could be “predictively.” We’ve learned it’s going to be “ignored” through practice—malpractice—but continue to windbag our way along, hot air balloons enjoying the view of our own lofty views, without often enough cutting to flaming heat for a drift into What-If, Why-Not, How-About, Who-Might, Where-Now, When-Then …
Word Count: 151,000 / On Pace: 155,650 / Year’s Goal: 200,000
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