LEND A WILLING EAR

SUE DE GROOT

The Pedant Class and Your Stars

AST week I was honoured to be a guest at a lunch table around which were gathered eight men who meet regularly in order to flagrantly disobey the laws of the natural universe.

No, they were not magicians, although there was something magical in what I witnessed there. What sets these men apart from those found in the natural universe is not just their intellect and achievements — all have published books; each is spoken of with reverence in his field of endeavour — but their ability to listen.

In the natural universe, put eight high-achieving men around the same table and at least five of them would be speaking at the same time. There would be arguments and raised voices and unbridled competitive verbosity and much pounding of cutlery.

Not here. The rule of this table, in this unnatural universe, is that only one person speaks at a time, and the rest listen.

I’m not going to tell you the names of these illustrious personages, nor where they meet, because that might put them in danger. A supervillain bent on global domination might kidnap them and force them to create a new world order based on rational thought and polite behaviour.

Keeping one’s mouth shut while another speaks might not sound like an act worthy of the Nobel Prize, but these men did not merely pretend to listen while planning their own responses, as happens all the time in the natural universe. They listened, leaning forward, watching the person speaking, absorbing and enjoying his words.

There was a beat of digestive silence when each speaker indicated he was done, proof that none of the listeners had been sitting there faking attentiveness while quietly formulating a counter-argument.

I was moved by this display of mutual respect. It made me wonder: What if this unnatural universe took hold and became natural? What if listening became more highly valued than speaking?

What a ridiculous proposition. Nobody listens any more, particularly on social media. Everybody shouts. You have to shout at people to make them listen, goes the prevailing ideology.

Language does not favour the listener. “Pay attention” makes attentiveness sound like something that comes at a cost, or is extracted by force. No one minds being told to “speak up”; everyone is annoyed by “shut up”. “It’s your turn to speak” is a phrase that confers favour and distinction.

But say we turned the natural universe upside down and made listening an ideal prized more than ruby-red sports cars. Imagine if at every gathering of formidable minds the participants waited anxiously for the instruction: “Your turn to listen.”

Imagine if instead of public speakers we had public listeners. A Listener of the House would do a

What if listening became more highly valued than speaking?

lot more good than a Speaker of the House, if you ask me. Politicians would do well to employ listening instructors instead of a flatulence of speechwriters.

Many things would have to change if listening trumped speaking. Dialogue in novels would have to be written from the listener’s side, like this:

“Do you want a cup of tea?” heard Fred. “No,” heard Mabel. This might become confusing if, as happens in the natural universe, Fred was not listening properly.

Say he was thinking about how much the plumber charged to unblock the drain and how he could have done it himself, or say Mabel was trying to tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue while speaking and he misheard her. Then we might have this:

“Do you want to marry me?” heard Fred.

“No,” heard Mabel, which surprised her, particularly the force with which she heard it. Since when did Fred refuse a cup of tea?

The verb “to listen” comes from the Old English hlysnan, which meant to hear and obey. The obedience part got dropped somewhere along the way. No one listens to advice any more.

But if you go all the way down the etymological ear canal, kleu, the ancient root of listening, also gave rise to words for splendour, honour and glory.

There is a lot to be said for listening. You learn things. Also, it enables you to eat lunch. LS