Research in the United States on listening skills during a lecture found that we typically absorb only 25% of what is said to us. That means we use barely half of a single ear! A parish priest once told me: "We have to announce something three times if we want to be reasonably sure everyone has actually heard it."
Perhaps we pick up this bad habit at school—hearing without listening, perceiving without understanding, or worse still, knowing beforehand what the other person hasn't yet said. A hard look inward, paired with honest inquiry, reveals the barriers that keep us from listening with true sincerity.
We listen, but meanwhile we're turning over the past in our minds—that phone call from our son that upset us—or we're already thinking ahead: running through the day's tasks.
How do we stop swinging between yesterday and tomorrow?
We listen, but through a fixed idea about the person speaking. Everything they say risks being filtered through the label we've stuck on them: bourgeois, progressive, ideologically rigid, narrow-minded.
How do we hear the person—not their faults, their qualities, or our own preconceived notion of them?
We listen, but we're afraid of what we'll hear. We dread a request for help, a cry for aid, and we're already drowning in work.
How do we open our hearts completely, even to ideas or an S.O.S. that frightens us?
We listen, but only to the words spoken, deaf to what the tone of voice hides, blind to what the hesitation in someone's speech conceals.
How do we listen not to words, but to the deep human being standing before us?
We listen—or rather, we watch ourselves listening. We think about the impression we're making, the importance of the conversation.
How do we avoid turning inward, that self-conscious glance that cuts us off from the other?
We listen, but wrung out by the tension of an entire day. Good intentions cannot overcome the physical restlessness that overwhelms us. All our effort goes into hiding irritation, nervousness, or exhaustion.
How do we become truly available to what the other person needs?
We listen, but afraid to approach the suffering of the person speaking. We unconsciously refuse to enter into their pain.
How do we become compassionate in the true sense—accepting to suffer with the other?
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Every person we meet hungers first and foremost for someone who will pay them real attention, who will reach them in their deepest self, in what is unique and eternal about them. If we work at putting ourselves in their place, at identifying with the other, only then can we begin to listen. Welcome the person, not the idea you have of them. Listen all the way through, put aside your worries and fatigue. Find time to pray, to place yourself under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, calm yourself, let what lies in the depths of your being flow forth, and make yourself open to Jesus praying within you.
With a person who is handicapped, all the obstacles to listening intensify. One person can speak only a few essential words: we must carefully fill in the gaps. Another articulates poorly; we must reconstruct the phrase. Still another shows reactions in their face that wound us; we must look beyond the surface to reach what they are trying to tell us. Another is locked in silence, in solitude: we must guess, and sometimes simply be there beside them, present with all the sympathy and affection that prepare wordless communication. For even when ears hear, only the heart truly listens.
- M.H. Mathieu, 1989
(O.et L. 45 )