LISTENING TO THE SELF. Perhaps the greatest listeners are not those who listen to other people, but who are expert at listening to themselves. Listening is a skill that trumps all others. The words may flow from our mouths like the great Euphrates river and our style may be as dramatic as the best of Euripides, but unless we have mastered the skill of listening we will be reduced to little more than the playback system on a recording device. Since we have already learned (and always knew) that communication is a two-way street, it is not enough to learn what we are going to say, or practice how we are going to say it. We must first be able to listen and to hear (they are different) what is being said both by ourselves to ourselves and by the power person to us and to others.
Earplugs against the third voice. If we listen to ourselves we will hear voices. Don’t be alarmed. It isn’t like somebody comes blustering onto our stage and hollers, “Now hear this!” Nor is it the voice of ghosts, goblins, or the inner raging of the insane. They’re not very loud voices. The voices, of course, are silent, except in our minds where they are heard. Some call them ideas. The actual words that form our ideas are not always clear, but the ideas come, and they can be heard behind the cacophony of what the outer ears are hearing.
If we listen to ourselves, even as we speak, it’s a quiet suggestion that we should follow this path or that, that we should add this marvelous metaphor, slow down the presentation, or pause so our listeners will be able to absorb what we are saying. If we listen to ourselves as we speak we will hear the rhythms we should employ—the beat of the drums of our presentation. If we listen we will know when the voice should rise to put sound italics over a thought, a phrase. If we listen we will know when we are reaching the climax of our presentation that will be underscored with the excitement and power of our voice. And if we listen we will know when to end it.
I must say that most people who speak, either to a friend, jury, or board, do not listen to themselves. They are tied to the habit of old ideas and are stuck in the ruts of their predictable thoughts. They fail to listen to determine if a new image, some spontaneous concept, may be tapping timidly at the door, pleading to enter. They go through life with earplugs smashed into the deepest recesses of their mind’s ear—the third ear—and nothing is permitted to enter the mind or escape the lips that has not been thoroughly thought out, read, or memorized. Their public speaking is like feeding guests leftover pizza from last month’s office party.
I see speech makers reading their speeches—and most can’t read very well. More often I hear speakers lashed to the post of their notes. Struggle as they may to be convincing, they fail to penetrate the third ear of their audience, for it’s the third ear that hears best that which was first heard in the third ear of the speaker. Spontaneity is the key that unlocks the door of the listener, because that which is spontaneous is honest and is heard as honest. And if it is honest it convinces. If it is honest it moves the other to our side, to our way of thinking. If it is honest it wins. In the end, the product of spontaneity wins.
I’m not arguing that one cannot write an honest, thoughtful line that can later be read aloud. Indeed, I am trying to write honest lines here. But honesty is not only in the words. As we have seen, honesty is exposed in the texture of the sounds and rhythms of the voice. If we listen to someone say as the roof caves in, “My God, George, watch out! The roof is caving in!” or you hear the person read, “As the roof caved in he hollered to George to watch out,” it is immediately apparent which carries the better truth.
When we’re tied to our notes, or worse, when we’re frozen in the words of a memorized script, the sounds, the language, the whole dramatic movement is lost. Listen to the anchor persons on the evening news—the placid smiles pasted on their otherwise dead faces, their lips forming the words, their eyes glued to the teleprompters. They tell us in their singsong voices about murders and rapes and unspeakable horrors of every description, and even, occasionally, of joy. We are unmoved. We hear about thousands killed or maimed in bombings across the world. Nothing happens. We go on eating our popcorn. The flow of blood may turn the rivers scarlet and the dead bodies may well lie bloating in the sun, but as they read, the anchor persons provide us nothing more than the deadened sound of the written word.
But put the reporter on the scene, the microphone in her hand. Let her look at the devastation and speak outside of the script and we begin to respond in kind. Television has learned to put the grieving mother and the irate citizen who was robbed or cheated before the cameras. The shocked passersby who have just witnessed a horror do not read from a script or speak a memorized line. Such persons broadcast a vivid, moving message. That which moves us is the inner voice that people hear in themselves and pass on to us.
The other day I was called on to speak at a peace rally at the conclusion of a peace march though town. I had no time to gather up any sort of organizational thought concerning what I might say. Moreover, a crowd of thousands of eager listeners, all expecting me to say something remotely intelligent, is somewhat intimidating. My heart was racing as I walked up to the speaker’s podium. The microphone was staring at me along with thousands of eyes. The crowd suddenly quieted. Even dogs, anticipating something, stopped barking and the children ceased their crying. There was that horrible moment of silence as the crowd waited.
My mind was blank. White. I looked out over the crowd. I could feel the butterflies flying in sync with the beating of my heart. Then I consciously removed the earplugs against my inner voice. As soon as I began to listen, that small, quiet voice said, “This is what people look like in a free nation.” And I began my speech with what I heard. I said, “I see you looking at me, wondering what I will say, hoping I will say something worth your while to hear. I want to tell you how you look to me. You are what people look like in a free nation.” The inner voice directed the words. “What I see are thousands of beautiful people of every description. I see the young who will carry on this fight for us after we are gone. I see workers and businesspersons and mothers and babies. I see old men—none as old as I. And you are beautiful. And what I want to say into your beautiful faces is, ‘We will win this fight.’
“Hatred cannot destroy such beauty. War, which is the ultimate terror, the blood of the slain innocent filling the gutters, the babies lying rotting in the streets, the charred corpses of their mothers gathering flies, cannot bring peace and cannot stop terror. We cannot stop terror by terrorizing. We cannot stop hate by hating. We cannot stop killing by killing. We cannot bring peace by waging war. The bursting of bombs that fragment the villages of innocent people and blow their arms and legs from their bodies are not missiles of love and of peace.” They were words not from a written script but words that escaped the lips when the earplugs of the third ear were pulled out.
The speech went on for another ten minutes. As I listened, the third ear told me when the climax was near. It also told me to stop. To let silence settle in once more. To bring the people into my focus and me into theirs by the power of utter silence. Then I heard the question in my third ear. “How many children must we murder in our attempt to extinguish one evil man? Let us count them, and when I have reached enough, let me know. One? Two? Forty? Seven hundred? Ten thousand?” The inner voice told me to continue until I was stopped. Suddenly someone in the crowd yelled, “None! None! None!” And the crowd began to chant, “None, none, none.”
Then came the inner voice saying, “It’s time to end this. Better to be brief than sorry.” And the question was, of course, what shall I say to bring this speech to a powerful end? The question and the answer in response took less than a second. “Peace comes when we realize that their babies are as precious to them as ours are to us.” I saw a child below me in its mother’s arms. A good listener is one who not only hears his inner voice, but who takes the risk of doing what the voice suggests. I motioned to the mother to come up to the podium with her child and took the child by its hand. Then I said, “Let us save them all.”
I say listen to yourself. We hear our inner voices constantly, but most of us are not expert in listening to them. We silently talk to ourselves and hear ourselves during nearly every waking moment of the day. The words I write on this page were first spoken in my mind and heard in my third ear only seconds before my fingers began putting them on the page. As if by some black and evil magic when we speak to the power person, the juror, the boss, we insert earplugs into our third ears and speak like deafened mannequins capable only of reciting what is prompted by the well-rehearsed notes we drag to the speaker’s platform.
Behind the words I’m speaking I hear a small prompting from my third ear. Sometimes I get two or three such promptings that come along in rapid succession. I must do something so as not to forget these cues. I’ve learned to tuck in my little finger (as if one is making a fist with only that digit). This slightly uncomfortable cramping of the little finger is to remind me to give this example or offer that metaphor, or it may simply remind me where I am in the talk so I can return from short side trips and pick up the theme—a marker that keeps me from becoming lost.
Editing the inner voice. Having heard the inner voice with our third ear, are we at liberty to always express aloud whatever we’ve heard? I have preached the imperative of truth telling. Every civilized society abhors assaults, either physical or verbal, and as members of that society we are bound by its rules the same as we are bound by its laws. If we expressed every thought we have heard from the inner voice we would find ourselves in a world of trouble. “I ought to kill the sonofabitch,” or “He’d probably steal milk from babies if he were smart enough to sell it,” or “His breath would offend a skunk.” The unedited inner voice would cause us to lose the friends we need and create a host of enemies we do not.
But the inner voice is also equipped with an automatic editing device. The editor hovers above the action like a member of the security police in a helicopter. It contains the ear within the third ear. We experience the ear’s editor every day. If we are listening we not only hear the spontaneous product of the mind, but we sort through that product in order to recite only that which may be expressed without injury. It is not only important to listen to the voice but also to respect the editor. Without hearing the inner voice we will create nothing, say little of interest, and say it as if we were speaking from the bottom of a tub of mud. But if we listen to the inner voice and do not also listen to its editor we may find ourselves sentenced to the outhouse or some other house not of our choosing.
I say the editor is nearly always trustworthy. Yet we are timid creatures. “Do I dare say that? What will they think of me? How will it sound to this audience?” The questions that a cautious editor raises often stifle us to the point that we’d just as well have ignored the third ear in the first place. Those edits that are obviously deleterious need to be heeded. But we must ignore edits that seek to eliminate new thoughts, new ideas, new ways of saying something, unfamiliar physical movements such as my invitation to the mother to bring her child to the podium. These risks of doing something in the moment are the risks we should take. The discomfort we feel is not because what we are about to do or say is dangerous. It’s that it’s new and different and creative—all the things that make a presentation powerful.
In court during the final argument I asked the jury what a witness would have said had the prosecution had the courage to call him. “Where was Mr. Bernstein? Where is he hiding? Ask the prosecutor who sits over there with a smile on his face. What would he say if Bernstein were here? The prosecutor knows.”
Suddenly the inner voice says, “Go over and become the witness, Bernstein, and take the stand yourself.”
I hear my editor reply, “That’s a little risky.” Then I ask myself, “What will the prosecutor do? What will the judge say? Will I be embarrassed in front of the jury?” The questions are posed in a fleeting second, but some force urges me on. I walk to the witness chair and sit down. I look over at the jury, and I begin, “My name is Orville Bernstein. I live in—well, the prosecutor knows where I live. It’s a big secret. But I’m here, and here is what I have to say: I was there when Mr. Hammil was shot. It isn’t the way prosecutor said it at all….” The prosecutor objects, and the objection is sustained. What the witness would have said remains a mystery to the jurors, and my listening to the inner voice may have won the case.
In a civil case I made a plea for justice that was bursting with compassion for the victim of a corporation’s negligence. I heard an inner voice say, “Bring the plaintiff up to the jury so he is standing beside you as you talk about him.” Again, it was risky business. I had never seen it done in court before. But it is one thing to see a human being as a mere occupier of a seat next to counsel across the room, to see him sit silently there day after day, and it’s quite another thing to bring the person up close to the jury so that they see every pain-induced wrinkle in his face and the shadows of agony behind his eyes.
Learning to hear with the third ear. How does one become an expert in listening to the inner voice and hearing it with the third ear? It takes practice, in the same way that one becomes proficient at playing the guitar. If we have never strummed a cord we cannot play the simplest tune.
Begin talking out loud to yourself when you’re alone. Don’t be alarmed. It’s no sign that the psyche is splitting. As you drive down the road begin listening to your thoughts and speaking them aloud. Don’t be afraid of the old saw, “You don’t need to worry about talking to yourself until you begin answering yourself.” Become the editor—hear what the editor says. Is your hesitancy to take the risk well founded, or are you only afraid to be different? If in doubt, take the risk. Better to be scorned than to bore. Better to be slightly outrageous than to join the walking dead.
If you do this for a month as you drive to work each day you’ll be able to hear the inner voice, to become aware of its sounds, its rhythms, its wisdom, its creativity, and yes, its beauty. And when you present your case you’ll be able to hear the inner voice speaking clearly to you so that what you say and do is no longer the dreary, warmed-over stuff one slogs through from the written text.
Listening to the other. Daily we practice the art of nonhearing. We have become advanced in the skill of turning off the world so that, in important ways, we have become deaf mutes neither capable of hearing what is happening around us nor responding to what we hear in a sensitive, effective way. We hear words, but only their sounds. Truth is, most of us have not had the experience of being listened to closely. Hence we have developed little skill in listening closely.
How could it be otherwise? We get up in the morning and the first thing we encounter is rarely a discourse with the self. We have a relationship with the Today show or turn on some talk show host and listen to his blaring, obnoxious inanities we confuse with intelligent observations. We say little if anything to our house spouse: “How did you sleep? Did you let the dog out? What’s going on in your day today? Don’t forget the grocery list. We’re out of coffee and cereal.”
In our car on our way to work we listen to the news, which is mostly the yappings of some hysterical voice screaming about Toby’s Almost-New-Car Lot, or we turn on the jump and jive that exposes our ears to a variety of shattering discords accompanied by utterly meaningless words. We have lunch with someone from our office in a restaurant that is so noisy a hundred-megaton bomb could be exploded across the street and we would go right on yelling at the top of our voices.
We are being trained not to hear anything but what the voice of Big Brother (the corporate overlord) wants us to hear. We are being trained not to tune in to ourselves but to tune ourselves out and tune in the programs that Madison Avenue prepares for us, so that we, the New Indians, as it were, will voluntarily give up whatever we have in exchange for the trinkets and beads and booze that the corporate overlord wishes to sell us from the company store. In short, we have become deaf mutes of a kind.
Learning to tune out, not in. We should become experts in tuning out that which is the intrusive noise called television, the vacuous conversations of the attendees at a cocktail party, and the jarring, empty hullabaloo that surrounds us every day. I am often accused of not listening to what is going on around me when, indeed, I am listening to what is going on within me. My wife, Imaging, claims I enjoy what she calls “a rich inner life,” one that seems unaware of the outside world. But we do not need to know most of the overflow of information we are exposed to.
You could listen intently to every word that is spoken at the average dinner party, and the next morning, when called upon to give a short summary of what was said, nothing, purely nothing, would come to mind. Five couples talked incessantly, usually over each other, for three hours, but little of interest was said and nothing of import was heard. Although I offered my own startling inanities at the dinner and attempted to be as lithe as any with my comebacks and humor, still, at last, what I offered will likely be as memorable as the bagatelles I endured from the other guests. The next morning I, too, for the life of me couldn’t tell you what I said.
Whether we are being bombarded by the media, the masses, the “music,” or the otherwise miserable, we need the ability to tune out the noise and tune in ourselves. I am not suggesting we should live our lives isolated from the world around us. I am simply saying that, if for no better reason than self-defense, we ought to develop the skill of tuning out that omnipresent noise pollution in favor of what is often the more interesting world within. Although we wish to develop the skill of hearing others around us, we must also be able to tune them out when they provide only noise pollution. A listening device, which in part is what we are, is of little value if the on-off button is not functional. In the end we must tune out and then tune in.
The inimitable power of the third ear. If we desire the magic that will empower us to win, we must learn how to hear what has not been said. The power person speaks. The witness on the stand gives his answer. The judge comments on an objection or makes a hasty decision. Yes, our loved one says she didn’t really care that we got home after midnight. Have we heard them? Have we listened to what was actually said but not said?
A skilled listener will have heard the other person with such sensitivity, with such a sympathetic, tuned-in third ear, that the listener hears not only what the other has said, but has felt the feelings behind the words. Indeed, the skillful listener may well hear what the other meant but never heard himself.
At Trial Lawyer’s College we do an exercise in listening that is intended to develop this magic. It works in the following way: A person selected in advance has a story to tell about something important in that person’s life, and that person takes the stage. Let us call the storyteller Marge. An expert listener who we will call Henry accompanies the storyteller. Both are seated, Henry seated slightly behind the storyteller, Marge, so that he can see her body language as she tells her story and at the same time be out of Marge’s direct line of vision. She begins her story. She is nervous at first because she is on stage. Moreover, she is not speaking directly to Henry, but to the audience.
Henry is instructed not only to listen to the words Marge is speaking, but to listen intently with his third ear to what Marge is not saying. Often what we say aloud to others is akin to an iceberg—more of it floats under water than above. It is this unsaid part of the story that Henry is instructed to hear and to speak out loud as he hears it. If the unspoken thought that Henry hears with his third ear and reports to Marge rings true to Marge she will nod her head in the affirmative and continue on with her story. If, on the other hand, what Henry reports does not fit, Marge will reject it with a negative shake of her head and continue on. The process might go like this:
As Marge begins her story she folds her arms across her chest and crosses her legs, a stance that typifies someone under stress from the anxiety of the moment. Henry, the listener, doubles Marge’s body language and crosses his own arms and legs, in this manner aiding himself in understanding the feeling that Marge is experiencing.
Marge: Before I start this story I want you to know that it is true.
Henry: But I am afraid to tell all of it. (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: I love my husband very much. (Her arms are still crossed and there is no conviction in her voice.)
Henry: But there are some things about our relationship that bother me. (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: We have a good relationship and we are both devoted to each other.
Henry: But sometimes I think he isn’t as understanding as he should be. (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: He works very hard.
Henry: But so do I. (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: And we are trying to save our money to buy a home of our own. (She has begun to lean forward as if to attack. Henry doubles her.)
Henry: A home of our own is a dream I have always had, and I think it is worth working for. (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: I think that if we work hard enough and save our money that that dream is within reach. (Her voice changes, as if giving a lecture to her husband.)
Henry: But I don’t think that my husband wants a home of our own as badly as I do. (Marge nods yes.)
At this point in the exercise, if we were not listening with a third ear, Marge would have said simply: “Before I start this story I want you to know that it is true and that I love my husband very much. We have a good relationship and we are both devoted to each other. My husband works very hard and we are trying to save our money to buy a home of our own. I think that if we work hard enough and save our money that that dream is within reach.”
But the skilled listener has heard and seen a good deal more. He has heard that Marge is afraid to tell all of her story, that their relationship is not as good as she wishes it were, that her dream for a home of their own is not happening because her husband is merely giving lip service to it.
Marge’s story goes on:
Marge: I am not against owning a new car. Lord knows, the one we have is nearly ten years old. (Again, the sound of her voice is as if she were arguing with her husband.)
Henry: But we can get by with the old one. (Marge shakes her head in disagreement. The listened-to says no when the listener goes astray.)
Marge: We need a different car. Our old car has broken down several times and I’m afraid it will quit on me sometime on the freeway at night, and I would be very afraid if that happened. So I think we need a different car all right. But the car my husband wants to buy is a sports car, one of those sleek-looking things, you know the kind I mean.
Henry: Yes, the kind that cost a lot of money. (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: And I just don’t think we can afford it given our goal to own a home of our own. Besides, who needs a sports car to go to work every day?
Henry: Yes, and I wonder who he is trying to impress? (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: All we need is cheap but reliable transportation. One of those small economy cars would work just fine. We could buy a secondhand, low-mileage model for half the price of the sports car he wants. (Marge looks pained and frustrated. Henry doubles even her facial expressions and the sound of her voice.)
Henry: And really, who is he trying to impress with a new sports car? I wonder if he has an agenda that I am not aware of. (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: And yes, I will have to say that he has been getting home a little late lately and often has the smell of alcohol on his breath. But I am not the jealous type and I would not, under any circumstances, doubt his loyalty. And I do not.
Henry: Yet, I can’t be sure. He wants this car. He would probably be ashamed to take another woman out in the old car we own.
Marge begins to cry. She turns to Henry and says, “I have never let myself think that. That is not part of my story. My story is about not being able to get a home of our own, and it is not a story about a cheating husband. And I don’t believe he is.”
Now they revert back to their respective roles:
Marge: I guess I’m not all that opposed to a sports car. They can be fun.
Henry: I hope he is being true to me. I would gladly agree to a sports car if I could be sure there was nothing going on. (Marge nods yes.)
Marge: Yes.
And that’s the end of a story that otherwise would have sounded quite benign—a simple conflict between a married couple on how to spend their money. The listening skill is best experienced when the listener tunes in to the feelings created by the words, more than to the simple words themselves. In our example, Marge’s words seem to be about how money should be spent, but the feeling that the words impart is one of a woman who is worried that her marriage is failing.
When we are cross-examining a witness or listening to the boss’s position on a raise, or, indeed, listening to our loved ones discuss an issue that is important to them, we usually hear only that which the speaker feels safe to tell us. Listen to the corporate head make his presentation on the company’s condition, or the president as he delivers his state of the union speech. The other side of the story will be left out as surely as the thief forgets to tell us that he was stealing the blind man’s wallet when he helped him across the street.
Practicing with the third ear. One need not take the stage to perform the listening exercise of Marge and Henry in order to become better skilled in the art of listening with the third ear. The exercise is easy to do, and the reward of achieving a greater listening skill is great. Instead of slogging along at another boring cocktail party, why not set up your own listening exercise? Unbeknownst to our storyteller at the party (everyone wants to tell something about themselves) we can begin to perform the function of Henry by injecting our understanding of the deeper statements that the storyteller is making. If we are right, he will likely nod or say yes and continue. He has discovered something important about us—that we are good listeners—which encourages him to share his story with us more intimately. We can become Henry on any occasion, at any place. Let’s be Henry when we talk to our spouses, our children, the boss, the judge, the jury, and the witness.
Over the years I have been a guest on a number of nationally televised talk shows. I remember many years ago when I was asked to be on the show of a now-famous late-night host who then was just beginning. When the camera was on me he would ask a question, and when I turned to answer him he was nowhere to be found, buried as he was in his notes, as he got ready to ask me the next question or to make the next quip.
It is almost impossible to talk to the back of someone’s head, and from his
standpoint, because he was not listening but was tied to his notes, his questions were shallow, sometimes silly. The interview was a catastrophe. On the other hand, I have been a guest on The Larry King Show many times. No one is better at the interview than Larry, who listens intently to your answer, nods his acceptance of your answer, or asks the next question based on what you have just said. He creates a relationship that encourages the guest to feel secure, to tell the whole story. Yes, he does not often ask the hard question. But hard questions often send those being interviewed scurrying into hiding.
In the same way as the late-night show host who was tied to his notes, I see lawyers in the courtroom tied to theirs. They have not heard a single answer of the witness. They have not heard any of the unspoken words of the witness. They have not been listening with either their own, two exterior ears and surely not with their third ear. As a consequence, the lawyer bumbles along and the examination usually goes nowhere. The witness is left in control, because the lawyer is controlled by his notes—filling the room with the sound of his voice that, as it were, signifies nothing.
We need to employ our deeper listening to what is being said as it is being said and see how far this method of listening will take us, not only in understanding the real story but in creating a stronger bond between ourselves and the storytellers. We must show the other that we are willing to hear. We all need to be heard, and heard deeply. It feels good to be heard. In the end, the right to be heard and understood is the cornerstone of justice.
Life is often a lonely affair—even for those surrounded by others every day. The stuff of friendship is understanding. The power of persuasion is understanding those we attempt to convince. And, as we have discovered, understanding the other can best be achieved by listening deeply with our third ear. Therein lies the magic. Therein lies the power of listening.