At a loss for words? Listen for answers

I don’t know what to say right now. So instead of talking, I’m going to listen.

Some people think listening is easy, but you’d be surprised how few pay attention and really listen. Listening is one of the most active things we can do when we are engaged with each other. When we’re truly listening, we’re thinking and our neural pathways make connections with other neural pathways; there’s a lot of activity in our brains when we listen.

Listening also prompts us to ask questions. I have a lot of questions right now. I even have questions about my questions. I worry about what I’m asking and more importantly what I’m not asking. Am I asking enough questions? Am I phrasing them right? Am I asking the right people these questions?

Some of the questions being asked are fundamental ones about what’s at the foundation of society, and that is understandably disruptive — but it’s necessary. Sometimes asking questions gives us insight into the experiences of people, or groups of people, who are not like us. That exchange can create empathy. In 2020, as we sit at the pinnacle of a culture that has so often been built around mefirst selfobsession, to be empathetic can feel like a radical act.

Last week, I interviewed civil rights activist and Third Baptist Church pastor the Rev. Amos Brown. Our phone call was for a news story on an interfaith rally at San Francisco City Hall where he was scheduled to speak as part of a “kneelin” demonstration to condemn racial injustice in the wake of the death of George Floyd and other killings of people of color by the police.

Brown, who is also the president of the San Francisco NAACP, speaks with the emphatic, deliberate tones we often associate with orator activists and preachers. And something he said, which didn’t make it into the story, has stayed with me since that day: As Brown talked about the lynching of Mary Turner in 1918 and the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, he mentioned how the culture of violence against African Americans had made a lasting mark on the lexicon of the black community.

“Black people don’t say barbecue, we say cookout,” Brown said. “A barbecue was synonymous with black folks being lynched.”

Brown continued to explain that the term “lynching party” didn’t just refer to the group of people who carried out the lynching. In the early 20th century, the act of publicly murdering a person of color sometimes brought observers who sat and watched as it was carried out, sometimes grabbing souvenirs from the crime and taking photographs. The fact that the pain and fear of this earlier violence still has a legacy in language begs for an empathetic response.

Empathy and art are inextricably linked. Really good art brings you inside another person’s experience. This exchange between artist and viewer, or listener and storyteller, is one of the most compelling interactions we have in our culture.

I’ve been asking myself who are the storytellers whose voices we’re not hearing from enough. There have been a lot of helpful lists going around encouraging people to find voices unlike their own to listen to, so our excuses for not seeking them out are getting more limited. (Let’s be honest, the excuses were never very good to begin with.) We should use this opportunity to listen and learn.

Understandably, listening can be uncomfortable too. When we’re not using our voices to ask questions, listening is quiet. Quiet presents a chance for us to contemplate the conditions around us. Yet our culture is so uncomfortable with quiet that we often fill it with defensiveness and other noise that makes it harder to hear and think. But a lot of things happening right now are difficult and can make us feel uncomfortable. If you think it’s difficult to listen and be part of the conversation, imagine living the reality of the conversation.

Sometimes it’s not our turn to talk or to have the answers. Seeing the enormous amount of people who feel unheard makes me think we’re really bad at listening. The good news is that we can get better at listening. With enough practice we will ask better questions, too.

If we can learn to be better listeners, 2020 might become the year we finally hear one another.