Are We Really Listening?

I have currently been in discussion with a good friend about the concept of really hearing what other people say. I recently made a comment on facebook that I believed was clearly sarcastic. Now, I should have known better than to post a sarcastic comment in a black and white medium, but the sentiment seemed pretty obvious. Crystal clear. The responses I got were people affirming my statement, saying I was cool, when I had been trying to show something clearly uncool.

As I chatted with my friend about this, she recognized a few things that I think are really important about this little, fairly insignificant facebook incident.

1) I know who I am. (Mostly.) But that doesn't mean that other people do! The people who responded to my comment are people who either don't know me too well or people who haven't known me well for about 10 years. If I was still the same person I was a decade ago, my statement would not have been sarcastic. If you knew me in my past, you would believe that I was ultra-conservative, not concerned about social justice, pretty much utterly stupid about the rest of the world outside my white, fundamentalist, baptist, small rural Iowa perspective. So you would believe that I think 'IM4GOD' is a great license plate. (Just to be clear - I do NOT think it is a great license plate.) Other people who responded know that I am a pastor and have a certain vision of who a pastor is. I do not fit their vision, but they don't know that.

2) We see what we want to see. We hear what we want to hear. Because of this we have to work hard to change ourselves. To read the other's words fully and totally, trying our best not to bring preconceived notions to their words. We can never fully take off all of ourselves, but we should at least recognize our own cultural location. It helps to know yourself. It helps you know where your weaknesses lie so that you can look at other people more clearly for who they are and what they bring instead of viewing them solely through your own cultural or ideological presuppositions. We have to work hard to listen to the other. We may think we know what they will say, but maybe they'll say something different. If we don't listen we'll never understand or appreciate perspectives different than our own. (As an aside, this was very obvious during the State of the Union. If you were a republican, you didn't totally listen because you 'knew' what Obama would say. If you were a democrat, you 'loved' everything he said because he said it. If you didn't care you probably still don't care. Or that's what it looked like on the screen.)

3) You can't be friends with everyone. I am learning this very quickly. In my parent's generation one didn't often move far from home or marry someone from another location. Often, people didn't attend college. So, friends that you had in high school could remain good friends for life. The circle of people you knew stayed pretty much the same. I am in a completely different realm. I have high school friends (well okay, maybe two?), college friends, camp friends, seminary friends, Decorah friends, CPE friends, and now Alaska friends. Plus family. I have lived in many more circles than my parents ever have. That doesn't make them bad, but it makes my life much different. You can only be close to so many people before you start to unravel and not have any truly close friends. It is the truth of life. So now I have to be pretty choosy because I already have several really good friends and I don't have room to have 20 more dear friends and keep my sanity. I have a hard enough time already. It is okay that some people don't really know me and never will. A certain surface level relationship on facebook is fine. Connection is fine. But I must acknowledge that deep connection just won't happen. So it is okay if people respond in ways I don't expect because they don't know me. At all really. They know I live in Alaska, but if you polled the normal person they wouldn't have a clue what I do. So what? The important people know (pretty much).

Listening is really important. Especially if you want to maintain a friendship with someone over the long haul. In the case of this particular friend, we have had our go rounds. It has never come to blows, but we've had it out. Several times, as fate would have it. We both have strong personalities and we both tend to think that we are right. But we're growing up. We're realizing that we love each other despite our differences. We're realizing that although we have taken completely different paths we have ended up in similar places. And it will happen again. But because we have listened to each other, talked it through, and kept it up over the years we are still close friends.

Life is tough. Listen to the ones you love. They may be saying something you've never heard.