when was the last time someone truly listened to you?

There are some sayings that are so pervasive in our lives, we start to take aspects of them for granted.

Communication is the key. It makes the world go round.

My fascination in terms of the communicative nature of human beings has always been with listening. I have always asserted that it takes some game to speak well, but it takes an infinite wisdom to be a good listener.

That means all the time.

It means focusing on each word B says when I ask “how was your day?” and being able to follow her as she expands on points. It means listening to praise and criticism, and responding twice as fast, strong, or hard no matter what. and it further means to shut the hell up when someone is trying to teach you something.

Sometimes you just gotta take your medicine.

Every now and then, we all need a shift kick in the teeth and a fire lit under us to get better, and the easy out in these circumstances is to word-weasel your way to the other side of the shit storm.

I have always found shutting up to be a better course of action.

But that’s easier said than done. Which brings me to the last time I felt heard. at least in a meaningful way.

I hold the skill of listening in such high regard because I have been the guy at open mic, banging away on my guitar, singing my guts out, only to realize the pitchers of beer are flowing and nobody has any idea what lyrics have been sung.

To pour your heart out that intimately, then have your words sail through a crowded bar into the muffling catcher’s mitt of that same crowd, really fucking sucks.

I did however, play an open mic show when I first landed in Calgary, the lonely Waterloo ex-pat. Upon my introduction, it felt as though some crowds had written me off a surface-depth millennial with no more that a sentence to say.

That changed fairly quickly.

By the time I had completed a set, the room was dissecting words and notes I had sung. Praising the phrasing and cursing the verses. But that was cool. You knew full well, that whole room had hung on every word you sang.

It’s ten times as cool when you wrote the song yourself.