From Your Lips to God’s Ear
Worry not, dear readers. Today’s column is not a religious tract, exhortation, or anything along those lines. Instead, we are merely borrowing a time-honored Yiddish, almost proverb.
The meaning is one of hope. The hope is that whomever your deity is, they will hear and answer your request.
Curiously enough, a person’s wish to be heard is a basic need. After all, most people believe that if they choose to say something, it has value.
Naturally, there are exceptions. For example, just as some people are uncomfortable keeping their own company, some people abhor silence, even for a couple of seconds.
For example, this lady has a female relative who has an annoying habit of humming to fill the pause in a conversation.
Another of her quirky void-fillers is sighing so loud that those sighs have managed to startle people. Imagine a brief conversational lull. You sit there pondering what has been said and try to formulate your response. But that relative’s exasperated sighs break into your contemplative moment. (Please note, this particular relative is neither a deep thinker nor does she live anywhere near the neighborhood of deep thought.)
The urge to smack that person “upside their head” perfectly fits the situation. But, of course, some people consider such pugnacious tendencies and behavior ill-mannered. Clearly, those folks have no sense of justice or a smidgeon of drama in their blood.
Whenever the topic of listening pops up, spouses of both sexes complain that their beloved mate never listens to what they have to or want to say.
Although we generously accuse both parties of the partnership, most complaints come from the ladies. Their complaints may be valid to a certain degree, leading this writer on a path of imaginative speculations.
If you watched Star Trek, you learned that Vulcans have a double-eyelid that protected Spock from going blind. Along the same line of thinking, perhaps human males have an extra flap in their ears that blocks out certain pitches of sound—namely, the female voice.
However, those flaps remain wide open during loud sporting events, making the ears of those less interested in the game bleed.
The guys have a handy trick that comes with age. The causes of the damage are many. But, whatever the reason, with age come the hearing aids.
Some tricky fellows turn off those little medical marvels whenever the sound of a female hits their tympanic membrane.
Guys, that is not only rude but also disrespectful. What if the wife did that to you? On second thought, if she has hearing aids, she too may hit the off switch. Tit for tat is only fair.
Does actual conversation exist among the common folk? In other words, does anyone bother to listen to the other side?
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If we consider action as proof, folks in power, be they in business or politics, do not listen to the needs of the many. Instead, they focus on the desires of the few, namely theirs.
Although most folks have the ability to speak, very few have learned the art of listening.
Please note that listening does not mean you gather your thoughts and decide what you want to say while the other person speaks. Instead, those non-conversations merely show one person talking at, down, or past the other participant in the conversation.
The art of conversation means one person speaks while the other listens attentively. A good back and forth between conversational participants is similar to a boxing match, without the blood, lost teeth, and swollen eyes.
We hope you do not count gossiping or bad-mouthing other people as conversation. Such verbal emissions merely display a lack of empathy and a depth of shallowness one could drown in if it were a lake.
A couple of ladies at work earned the moniker of “the Magpies.” Their running commentary on everyone they saw in the company café was legendary.
Our mother often cautioned, “If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all.”
Imagine the silence!
This lady’s female relative would lose her voice, sighing and humming while attempting to fill the void.
?