Ironically, I can talk a lot about listening.

I don't really enjoy poetry any more than the average modern American (which is very little indeed), but the Zen teacher Ryushin Paul Haller read this one by Mary Oliver at a retreat long ago, and it stuck:

Praying

It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

to make them elaborate, this isn't

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

To listen is to change. We take in words or actions, we try to understand them, we evaluate them. Another person's expression becomes part of our world, our memory. Ourselves. Many times, when we have a hard time listening, we are having a hard time changing. We may not even recognize that there's something in ourselves that we want to stay frozen in place.

Maybe another's words light a fire inside us, sparking zealotry or passion or determination. Or they rub us the wrong way, and our mind rises up in opposition. Maybe our opinion or viewpoint changes as we make space for the ideas and feelings of others.

The most sparse and bare outcome of listening is just to update our understanding of the speaker. Part of being human is that we have a shorthand model of everything and everyone we encounter. It helps us navigate the world. We can get stuck if we forget that the people in our head is not real. Anna and J and I know each other exceptionally well, but we are full of surprises.

Speak, and you change in the telling. Listen, and you change in the hearing.

The changing is the important part.

a recursive conversation

Today I had a few minutes alone with a student before or after class, and he asked why I wasn't coming back next year. I explained how I have all my communities and friends back home; sort of futile, since, as far as I can tell, the students do not know what "community" means. (Literally: I was there when my co-teacher Marcela was explaining it at some point earlier in the year, and of course their retention averages about zero since they divert their attention elsewhere as soon as a teacher starts talking.)

Then I was talking about how Chile is a high-context culture, so people don't listen to the specific words that are said, since it's not necessary. Unfortunately, if you're a foreigner and you don't have that context, it means that no one listens to what you're saying.

His responses had very little to do with what I was saying. He wasn't listening to me.