I have a tape deck in my truck and a collection of cassettes stored under the front seat. Years ago the friend who saved me from living in my 1969 powder blue VW Bug made these tapes for me in anticipation of my cross country drive home to Massachusetts. My tape deck can no longer play those tapes – in fact the radio in my truck has not worked for years.

But each day when I climb into my truck to drive to school – I am the principal of the high school I went to – I think of those tapes, look at my broken tape deck and spend the fifteen minute ride listening to nothing.

We are swimming in noise these days. Printed materials have been replaced by earbuds. We are constantly backed against a wall of sound. We are drowning like glasses fountaining over after the water has breached the rims.

Consequently, our capacity to listen – really listen – to each other seems compromised to the point where nobody can really hear what we are trying to say. Listening calls for us to create and sustain empty space. Deep listening is absorbed – leaving space for more listening. When we drink in what another is saying, allow ourselves to process their words there is something that happens to the speaker. There is a lightness that comes from being heard. A handing off of something heavy being carried like a pack being set down on the roadside and left behind.

Creating the empty space seems to be the first step in listening. Disconnecting from the voice in our heads, the sounds pumping through the earbuds, the din of noise streaming from the jungle of devices we navigate each day. 

There is a fountain on the campus of UCLA where the water flushes down through the center. I have seen the way this emptying stream of water pulls people to lean over the edge – appearing as though they are looking for something lost. If we could only empty ourselves like that fountain, I wonder if those we know and love might be drawn closer, might feel we are inviting them to be heard – to fill the space we have created. 

I know our technology has improved our quality of life in so many ways. But along the way I worry about what is being lost unnecessarily and what might be done to balance out what feels to me like an addiction to connectedness that has somehow left us lonely. 

Being heard is powerful – there is a healing that happens when someone listens to what we have to say. And a reciprocal feeling of having helped that comes from listening. The challenge is not finding what to say – it is – oddly – in creating the space for listening. 

If I ever do get a new truck, I am going to ask for one without a radio. That way I can be sure to keep working at arriving empty enough to listen.

Peace,
Chris