Next year, I pledge to listen with more than just my ears.
A friend that I admire taught me that lesson, although she didn’t mean to. My friend is smart, well-read, an amazing writer, bilingual, and one of the most gifted teachers I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing in action. Whenever I need guidance, I seek her opinion. I am honored that she calls me a friend. And in the span of two decades of friendship, she’s disappointed me only once.
It was fifteen years ago, and I’d just finished a book whose author I won’t mention because she’s controversial and conservative, and that alone is enough to shut down half the people reading this post. But I guess that’s why I’m writing this in the first place.
It was one of those books that made me think long after I’d finished reading it. And the first person I thought of to share it with was my friend–because it is in direct opposition to most everything she believes in.
When I loaned her the book, it wasn’t because I believed it was a superior way of thinking or because I wanted it to change her mind. Books are like movies–they’re more fun when you have someone to share them with. When you finish a book that made you think, you want to be able to talk about it with a friend. You want to dissect it, to debate it. She had loaned me books in the past that have shaped my thinking. And so I was delighted when she returned the book only days later.
“What did you think?” I asked, eager for our discussion.
“I didn’t even get through the first chapter,” she replied.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because that’s all it took for me to see where she was going,” she shrugged. “I didn’t need to read any more after that.”
That’s the one time I was disappointed in my amazing friend.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to read, watch, or listen to a viewpoint that opposes their own. Oppositional viewpoints are the spice of life. But so often, we seek sources that merely validate and reaffirm what we already believe. When I’m finished listening to–and I mean really listening to–someone who contradicts my own beliefs, by the end of our conversation, even if I haven’t changed my mind, I’ve learned something.
Listening to the opposing viewpoint without interrupting, without thinking about what we’ll say next, without firing off a barrage of facts and evidence we’ve gained through our own research, broadens our perspective and makes it even stronger. When we listen, it makes us more intelligent, flexible, and empathetic. Who wouldn’t want these qualities?
If that’s not enough incentive to listen to the other side, and you can’t get past the feeling that every political or religious conversation is a battle of wits, you might consider a strategy of every good commander or general: Know your enemy. If anything, listening to the opposite end of our own political spectrum strengthens our own arguments, makes us more rational during a debate and in turn, gives us credibility.
Although I learned that lesson fifteen years ago, I’ve found myself abandoning it. When my children and husband talk to me, I often don’t stop typing or moving around the house. In the classroom, I find myself nodding at my students with half an ear while thinking about how to move my lesson forward. I’ve rolled my eyes and hit “unfollow” when friends’ posts made me angry and borderline nauseous (yup…we’ve all been there). When I’ve felt hurt or disrespected, particularly over the past two years, I’ve lashed out.
I propose next year we start listening to each other–particularly if we’ve heard the opposing viewpoint a thousand times. Because even when we’ve heard something, it doesn’t mean we’ve listened.