TELL ME MORE: On the Art of Listening by Brenda Ueland

I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don’t listen to those we love. And least of all — which is so important too — to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.

This is the reason: When we’re listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life… It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good…

Unless you listen, people are wizened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can’t know anybody. Listening is love, that’s what it really is…

In order to learn to listen, here are some suggestions: Try to learn tranquility, to live in the present a part of the time every day. Then suddenly you begin to hear not only what people are saying, but what they are trying to say, and you sense the whole truth about them. Then watch your self-assertiveness. And give it up. One must really listen. Only then does the magic begin…

We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don’t, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.