There are so many different reasons for listening. In this series, we’re presenting a range of inquiries as a way to think about how and why we listen, and how our intentions affect the experience.
Today we’re asking: How can we listen to expand curiosity?
What happens when we listen with humility and acknowledge the limitations of our own perspective?
As Listener Poets, when people are talking or telling a story, we let them drive. We don’t interrupt unless we literally don’t understand one of the words they say. Even if we miss a word, we hesitate to break the flow; sometimes it becomes obvious from context a few words later. They’re saying they went to the beach with their mother for the last time over the summer. It was sunny and they held their mom’s hand and bought ice cream on the boardwalk. We might think about the last time we were at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. “Did you get fried pickles?” we wonder. “Did you rent a sailboat from that one place? What other beaches do you like to go to?”
But we hold all this in.
We let those questions flicker right through and out of our mind. We think about a clarifying question; maybe we even jot it down; but we don’t ask it until they hit a beat in the conversation. See, they’re telling us about holding their mom’s hand because that’s super significant to them. They’re there right now. They’re going deep, and they’re bringing us.
