Listen

The word for today is LISTEN. Sometimes when President Obama answers a reporter's question the first word he says is look. But what he really means is LISTEN. LISTEN to what I have to say because I have really thought this through. I like to LISTEN to President Obama.

I LISTEN to a lot of cable TV news--too much. There isn't much to LISTEN to. In this 24/7 news cycle, everything gets repeated over and over. The actual news is a small ball of solid glass packaged in a large box of styrofoam peanuts. Instead of looking through the glass, the cable news anchors and their guests spend their days and nights popping the peanuts, popping that small kernel of news into oblivion--and I LISTEN to them. I LISTEN to them when I don't want to LISTEN to myself.

To truly listen is to pay attention. More often than not what people really want is attention. One of the playwright Arthur Miller's most haunting lines is "Attention must be paid." To me it is more haunting than any quote from Shakespeare.

People crave attention, more than alcohol or ice cream or even status or success (unless they bring attention). Sometimes when I listen to a friend, he or she says thank you for listening. But I don't like it when I find myself saying that. It goes against my pride--a defacto admission that it is difficult to find someone to LISTEN to me.

A woman who lives in my neighborhood starting talking to me when we were out walking our dogs one day. She had finished graduate school, she had started a job, she was homesick for Texas. I got the sense that she was lonely; I got the sense that she needed someone to LISTEN, to pay attention, to acknowledge where she was in her life. Recently, her 93 year-old grandmother, who lives in Texas, had a stroke and was hospitalized. My neighbor is worried about her grandmother. When I saw her this week she told me she didn't think that people in her family were making the best decisions concerning her grandmother's care. But she wasn't there, so why should they LISTEN to her.

This woman has gone to Texas to visit her grandmother. Maybe if she is there with her grandmother, with her family, someone will LISTEN to her. She may say LISTEN mom to her mother or LISTEN Uncle Fred, this is what is going on. When I listened to her, this is what I heard. I heard, I'm worried, I'm scared, I'm lonely. Maybe something bad will happen and I can't change it, or maybe I can. Maybe if some one just LISTENS to me.