The Listenary

I admit the picture I will paint here is a long shot, a visionary’s dream. Try it with me.

Somewhere someone will reach out and get listened to by one other person. That first person then will go out and give the gift of listening to ten other people that week. Those people will thereby be empowered to listen to their children, and they will like it so well that they will devise ways to keep their listening up to date.

The next generation of children and teens will not need to act out because they can be heard by the important people in their lives any time they want to. They will pray quietly in school. As adults, they will go to the open window if they want to smoke. They will hold their guns as symbols of the sacred trust and freedom between them and their neighbors. There will be some who attend legislative sessions and political party conventions, just to observe, to listen, to be present, to hear those who need to be heard, to give available-eyes listening to those who stand behind the lectern.

Some of these will run for office. Others will create private organizations that can take over some of the overload of responsibilities our government now attempts to handle. Employees in either the government or the private sector will feel heard and better in touch with their own career goals and dreams, so they will move about and find new jobs that complement their skills and personalities even better than the old bureaucracy did.

Prisons will lose their overcrowding. Streets will no longer house disenfranchised persons who never felt heard in their lives. Police officers will get some needed rest and recreation so they can go home and give the gift of listening to their children for a better country in the next generation.

I believe listening is the lost link to getting heard with power and influence even in government. If information is power, then better listening is the way to power and influence—in business, in public speaking, and in reclaiming our government. If information is power, then the effective listener holds the key!