High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Listening’

The evening came whispering lullabies, and all the forest stilled.  The creek stilled itself, too, listening, listening, as the last faint echo of the day faded away.

Now all that was left was the deep, satin flow far beneath its surface as it smoothed itself against the sleeping stones.  That, and the breath of the trees.

The creek loved this time of day, when it put aside its rippling thoughts, its race to see what waited along the next bend.  Now it had only to rest in the silence of the evening, listening, letting itself become as quiet as the snow.

And as the last little wavelet sank into stillness, the creek felt itself filled with the entire vault of sky, and with the falling sun, and the reaching trees, and it was one with them, and whole.

We were talking last week, some friends and I, about the tendency in today’s world for people to bombard themselves continuously with sound.  It rumbles from cars and fills the air in every shop and market.  It’s in our elevators, waiting rooms, and offices.  We stuff our ears with buds of it when we’re walking in the park or out for a morning run.

The instant we arrive home, it’s on with the stereo, the radio, the TV.  Their sounds play into the night and wake us in the morning.  “It’s audio wallpaper,” a coworker once told me when he brought in a tiny desktop TV; “I can’t think without it.”

An ingrained habit, it’s almost like an addiction, this craving for continuous sound.  For the most part, people aren’t listening for pleasure; they may not be paying attention to the music or talk at all. But deprive them of it, and it puts them on edge.  They don’t know what to do without the stimulation and distraction it provides.

If you’re someone whose world is continuously filled with man-made sound, I’d like to make a suggestion.  As a happiness experiment, try weaning yourself from it so you can discover the pleasure and calm of ambient and natural sounds.  Learn to listen to the background music that life itself provides—the sounds of the city, of your workplace, the particular music of your home.  Listen to the wind, to the tone of peoples’ voices, to the laughter and cries of children, to the songs of the birds, the barking of dogs.

Then move deeper and explore the sound of yourself—the rushing of your thoughtstream, the movement of air in and out of your nostrils, your footfalls as you walk, the sounds you make when you eat, the tone of your own voice in all its moods and modes of expression.

Learning truly to listen quiets us; it opens our attention to new layers of being.  When we listen to the sounds of the world, we get to know it in a whole new way.  When we learn to listen to others, it opens our heart to them, broadening and strengthening our connections with them, deepening our appreciation for them, and our affection.  When we truly listen to ourselves, we uncover new dimensions of self-knowledge; we discover thoughts and emotions that had gone unnoticed before and gain the opportunity to consciously respond to them.

Beneath the sounds, upholding them all, lies a fathomless stillness, the layer of pure being and peace found through meditation.  Learning to listen is a kind of waking meditation that helps you realize that it’s there, in all its shimmering beauty.  You begin to sense its presence between the syllables of words, beneath machinery’s hum, supporting the whispering breeze.  You feel it upholding the beating of your heart, the breathing of your lungs.  And when you listen quietly and fully enough, its peace will seep into your awareness, and you’ll discover its nature is love.

The shrieking wail of my weather-alert radio blasted me from bed in the pre-dawn darkness.  I stumbled to the next room to shut off the ear-piercing screech and, turning on the audio, learned that a thunderstorm was blowing through the next county to the north.  I uttered a low, angry growl and crawled back under my warm blankets to wait for the more polite alarm of my clock.  It wasn’t a very long wait.

The heat hasn’t been turned on for the season yet in the building where I work, so I shivered my rain-dampened way through the long list of emails requesting my immediate attention.

I wanted coffee and found my boss in the break room scowling and muttering under her breath.  She hadn’t put the lid on the pot when she brewed the first coffee of the day and it was sitting in a pool of brown liquid and grounds.  “Want some?” she asked, holding out the pot.  “It’s crunchy.  But it’s hot.”   Hot was too good to pass up, crunchy or not.

It was an hour later before I really noticed the steady trickle of internal complaints that was dripping down the back wall of my mind.  I had wiped out the first dribbles by focusing on the tasks before me.  But now I realized I had a fair sized leak going.

I stopped what I was doing to pay attention to that sorry whine.  What was I really saying to myself?  What kinds of stories were running back there that were making me feel so listless and crabby?  What did I need?  That’s the only thing to do when a simple refocusing doesn’t work.  Listen to what’s going on inside you.  See if your body needs something.  See if what you’re saying is true or if there’s another way to look at it.

I quickly understood that I was still reacting to the rude awakening from my pleasant dreams.  I was telling myself I was tired and wanted to sleep, that I didn’t want to be at work, that I didn’t want to be busy.  Was that really true?  Despite waking a few minutes earlier than I had planned, I had slept well last night.  My body wasn’t really tired.  Why did I think I wanted sleep?  I realized the room was a bit darker than usual and opened the blinds on the window to let in more light.  If I didn’t want to be at work, what would I rather be doing instead?  I thought about some attractive alternatives waiting for me at home, but they would entail being busy, too, and I knew I would have time for them when I got there.  Were the tasks before me really that unpleasant or daunting?  If I looked at them one at a time instead of as a great heap, they looked do-able.  Easy, even.  I was still a little chilly, but not miserably so.  I decided to do that tasks that required visiting offices on other floors and walked the stairs to give myself some exercise.

The five minutes I spent listening to myself and responding to what I was saying turned my whole morning around.  Honoring yourself that way is important.  It helps you find the light in the gloom.  It lets you turn reaction into response.  And while it may not bring instant happiness, it points you in the right direction.  It puts you back in charge of things and reminds you that you’re your own best friend.  And that’s a pretty good thing to know.