Scott McCloud, in his foundational book, Understanding Comics, said that all of the action of the story comes between the panels and happens in our own minds. This is what listening is to a conversation. It’s where everything happens. When someone else is speaking, we spend so much time thinking about the next thing we will or should say, that we forget to listen, simply, intently, and completely.
Listening is hard work. If done well, for a long time it can be exhausting. For years my mother has been seeing clients as a trained psychotherapist, and when I was a kid I remember she would come finish a whole day of seeing clients and come upstairs from her home office and be completely and utterly drained. I didn’t understand it at the time but it was because she was really listening all day.
The truest form of listening is when you can remove yourself from the act and just focus on what the other person has to say. It’s not about offering the next statement, or zinger, or comment, or piece of advice, or even insightfully leading question. As a parent, this is so hard to do with your kids. I fail at it miserably on a daily, if not hourly basis. But when I do remember to listen to them or anyone else in a conversation it’s amazing. You can almost even see it in their faces. The whole energy of a conversation changes. A connection happens. And from it, love, understanding, empathy, and acceptance follows.