Day 83: It's Amazing What You Learn When You Start Listening

I feel myself changing. How often can you say that about yourself? There are days when I actively pursue a path that is unfamiliar to me for the sole purpose of doing something different. Other days, it just happens. While my core might remain the same, the person I have become on the outside changes with circumstance, relationships, and decisions. Some people have an easier path and some of us seem to struggle a bit more to find our way to happiness. What I’ve been doing has not brought me the life I’d hoped for, so I’m learning to change to some things. I’m learning to change me.

Most of these changes are in how I listen. Yes, those who know me, will agree that I am a very opinionated woman and sometimes that means I talk more than I listen. I am also guilty of dismissing the opinions of others if they don’t agree with me. I heard a group of people talking on the subway one day, people that looked like me and I enjoyed listening to them talk, thinking that I was one of them. Then I heard something that surprised me, one of them said, “Educated people always think other educated people think like them.” This struck me as a radical thought because it was true.

How many times have I met people who were part of the Christian Right, or hunters, or anti-choice and I naturally just assume that they are somehow less enlightened. So it occurred to me recently as I was listening to yet another hunting enthusiast making his argument, that maybe I should shut up and start listening. My husband has made a similar argument for hunting as this hunter and while I can see the logic, I still detest the act. Then I started listening and allowing myself to understand the other side – the enemy’s side and I discovered that maybe I could be wrong. If I am wrong about that, what else might I have been ignoring while I was trying so hard to be right?

So armed with this knowledge of my own ignorance, I found myself defending hunting to my brother last weekend. Tommy, that’s my bro, is an animal rights activist and made me watch Whale Wars and several other Animal Planet shows while I was home. Turns out, I learned so well from listening to someone else, that I was actually able to make a convincing argument to my brother. That same weekend, I went to mass and while I hated it, I realized that the believers surrounding me weren’t stupid or blind, they were just different in what they choose to believe.

I have a new outlook on some things, and while this does not mean I am suddenly going to be a conservative or listen to Rush or Ann Coulter without wanting to hurl the radio out the window, it does mean that I am going to actively pursue a few things I never would have done before. I am going to learn to shoot a gun. I still plan to lobby for stricter handgun regulations and I will always say that the second amendment was written in a time of war on our own soil and therefore possibly a little outdated, but I’m going to learn to shoot. I may even go hunting.

I think the definition of education isn’t so much about how many degrees you have, it’s about how much of life you’ve learned and absorbed. I still have a lot to learn, but at least now I know my mind is open. I may still disagree and I’ll likely never go to church again, but at least now I know how to listen and that’s a lesson I hope I’ll never forget.