If Somebody Is Not Listening To You, Stop Trying

It's In the Bible

“Listening is my aim. I have no other.”

—Marina Tsvetaeva*

In this short clip, Jordan Peterson addresses the spiritual damage that can be done by continuing to talk to somebody who is not listening to you.

Another word is “hearing.”

If somebody more often than not either literally can not hear you, (maybe hearing aids are needed, that’s a different story) or never connects to what you are saying, other than to adjust it, correct it, as you would a crooked painting on a wall—that’s going to cost you.

You will become exhausted, ashamed, and have very low self esteem. You will begin to think you do not “make sense” and that something is wrong with you.

Peterson suggests “pulling back,” and then “watching” them. I’m not sure what that means but it’s interesting. Mostly, we can see the people who aren’t hearing us.

In any case—conversely, or additionally, you must be mindful to be in relationships in which you are showing up with your best ears for the other person. And/or that both understand when, and under what conditions, mutual hearing will take place. If somebody always calls you when they are walking their dog, they are probably not that interested in listening to you and again, that’s ok. We don’t live in a world of totalitarian attentiveness—you can’t listen to everybody. Nor can you expect perfect strangers to be ready to listen to you.

But listening should be arranged, as meals, as communal dance, or prayer meetings. It can’t happen in a junkyard of texts and 10 different “apps” and driving or even walking the dog. But we do our best. I have all but given up. I’m waiting for the moment when I can talk to my friends not via digital pollution device that already has us half cut off. Cell phones. We are each in a cell, like a prisoner.

In America, people no longer “get together” or “have someone over for dinner.” Not never but, almost never.

I say, cultivate places where mutual listening can take place, carefully. It can take years. If anger or resentment is present, you will feel it, before you hear it. (At bottom, I’ll link to Marshall Rosenberg, once more. And that does not mean I practice as he instructs, but that I want to.)

If I terminate contact it is usually because I despaired at not being heard. We must, in order to be human, find out how exactly, the other person wishes to communicate, or not communicate, or by which medium, at which frequency, and they may say: “I like to write postcards. I’m battling exhaustion.” If we are listening, we look forward to the postcards. Maybe we go buy some ourselves.

(I buy postcards and never send them and then hate myself.)

Two demons, to catalogue:

1. Non hearing

2. Harassment

If somebody routinely says “What?” meaning they can’t hear you, in my opinion this is because they are not connected to you in the first place. Which is fine. We can be good or decent friends only to a small handful of people and friendship means hearing strung across time.

I consider hearing to be next to God, (as they say cleanliness is, which is also true.)

I have noticed and pondered this relationship between non hearing and danger.

A small child says, “Mommy. Mommy there was a man, that man again, he was in the schoolyard…”

“Shush sweetie I am tying to concentrate. Go play with your Poke glow.”

Two years later: “Ms. Grisham, did your daughter ever mention this person to you?”

Sobbing.

“No.”

Silence.

“Oh wait. She did….”

I just made up that story, (don’t worry, the child survived in my made up story. She’s just in the hospital.) Moral of the story:

We have to hear people. And we have to hear children. And we have to do it the first time they say something. And we have to believe them. We dismiss people because we lack what the Swedes call “plats.” (Space.) I do it all the time and it pains me and I don’t know how to solve it, since I’m always backlogged with “things I gave to get done.”

For example, Iberia lost my bag in May. I have not yet filled out the claim form. It involves finding receipts…) Every morning it’s a Truck of Failure on my chest. And there are many more. Where does the time go?

Being or feeling overwhelmed.

The whole world we live in, this crazy insane, terrifying surreal soup. We are all absorbing different parts of the soup all the time and then hoping to find people who heard the same part of the soup we did so they can hear us and we can hear them. Info Soup. Conspiracy Soup. Reality Soup. PSY OP Soup. Through these soups we seek to bond. To hear and be heard.

Arm Twisting

Somebody who tries to pressure you into doing something you have said you can’t or won’t do, is battling a demon.

Don’t confuse cruelty with breaking off “communication: because you were not heard and heeded.

That’s what I like about Jordan Peterson’s Alberta toughness. He pulls out the personal moral duty to make sure you don’t “keep trying” to be heard by people who aren’t listening to you.

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* That Tsvetaeva quote is from memory, approximated.

Now and forever one of the best clips on the internet.