The Need to Be Heard

“An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.” Plato

There are many cliches that are used to describe lulls in conversation. The awkward silence and the pregnant pause are two prime examples. There is also the concept of deafening silence in which the internal hum caused by the lack of noise seems to have only one antidote, noise itself. I was taught from a very early age to speak up, to demonstrate strength through opinion, and to be heard. In school I was literally rewarded for verbal participation in class discussion. However, I was never really taught nor encouraged to listen other than to remain respectfully silent when my elders were speaking. I had a teacher once who after hearing me make a remark designed to draw laughter from my fellow students at her expense said in retort, “Ahh William, the emptiest cans make the loudest noise”. At the time I thought it was a pretty good comeback for an old lady but recent history has caused me to return to her statement and finally grasp the powerful message she was trying to convey. I now know that her paraphrased rendition of the Plato quote was not a slight meant to combat my unnecessary interruption. It was an attempt by an educated woman to teach me to stop feeling the need to be heard and to give more energy to listening.

I recently went on a trip to see my four older sisters. It has been a yearly event for about the past ten years. We all meet up in a pre-determined city and have a special dinner. I can say without hesitation that our little get-together is the highlight of my year. Each time we meet, I come away from the trip closer to all of them and with a greater understanding of just how much they have all impacted my life. This year we met up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We rented a house and spent much of our time laughing about the past, giving our opinions about the present, and prognosticating about the future of the world. Our discussions were mostly light but they did become heated on a couple of occasions. I was very proud of how we all maintained civility.  During the entire extended weekend, we only had one little hiccup. 

On one of the late afternoons during the weekend, I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes in the midst of three of my sisters having a discussion about a social issue. I just lay there pretending to be asleep while I listened to the opinions being presented among the three. It was hard for me not to speak, to interject my point of view, to be heard, but I decided to just force myself to listen. The discourse began to get slightly louder as the tenor of their speech became more assertive and frankly aggressive. Then all at once, one of my sisters became upset and accused the others of not letting her finish her thought. One sister claimed that she was innocent of the slight while the other recognized her rudeness and began to apologize. The irony of the explosive moment was that it was not caused by a difference of opinion; they were not disagreeing with each other. The problem was caused by each of them wanting to talk while giving little or no energy to listening. They were not actively digesting the thoughts of each other but instead just waiting impatiently for the slightest pause in the conversation so that they could speak. There would be no instant resolution other than the three retreating to neutral ground; one of the journeys was accented by the slamming of a door.

As I was lying there, I did not judge any of their actions because I realized that I could be and have been any one of the players in this all too familiar scenario. I have felt the slight of not being listen to, I have denied culpability in the upset of another who felt they were being disrespected, and I have also recognized and apologized for my interruptive rudeness in regard to someone who has tried to explain their thoughts or feelings to me. I am an educated man and a thinker; I do believe I have things to say which is evidenced by my writing, but I am a failed listener. An honest retrospective look at my life reveals that many of my problems could have been averted had I just listened instead of speaking. In the future, instead of raising my voice to be heard above all others I will make every effort to pursue the quiet calm of the engaged listener. My goal is that over time I can replace my need to be heard with a want to listen. It is my hope that this shift in my conversational approach will conjunctively begin to fill up my proverbial can with the perspectives of others and thus assist me in the avoidance of any and all analogous comparisons to an empty vessel.