What Are You Listening For?

Two days ago, my ten-year-old grandson had just started at a new school. I was talking with him and asked what they had for lunch.

“Grilled cheese sandwiches,” he said.

“How did you like them?”

“There wasn’t enough cheese.”

I didn’t think much about it at the time. But this morning, while doing some sketching, I was thinking about childhood foods and asking myself: What were three foods I especially liked when I was a kid?

Peanut butter and jelly came immediately to mind. Then French fries. And then I remembered something else: big seeded rolls with butter and salt, dipped into coffee with cream. I hadn’t thought about those rolls in years.

And then the peanut butter and jelly brought back a memory of my father.

One time, when he came to my apartment in Manhattan, I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He took a bite and said, “There isn’t enough peanut butter.”

That memory led me somewhere I hadn’t expected.

Was my father criticizing me? Was he giving me an instruction? Or was he simply making a comment about how he liked his sandwich?

At the time, I think I was tilted toward criticism.

One of my father’s expressions was, “If you do it, do it right.” But there was another side to our relationship. He taught me carpentry, plumbing and electrical work. When he showed me how something should be done, he wasn’t necessarily criticizing me. He was teaching me.

So perhaps the question isn’t only what my father meant.

Maybe the more interesting question is: What was I listening for?

And suddenly my grandson’s grilled cheese seemed connected to my father’s peanut butter.

“There wasn’t enough cheese.”

“There wasn’t enough peanut butter.”

Neither statement is necessarily a criticism. They could simply be observations about what someone wanted.

Yet we don’t all hear the same words in the same way.

Someone can make a suggestion, and I can hear criticism.

Someone can offer instruction, and I can hear judgment.

Someone can make an observation, and I can hear an accusation.

The words come toward me, but something happens between the words and my experience of them.

This morning, as I continued meditating, I found myself thinking about the Earth’s tilt. The Earth is tilted as it travels around the sun, and that tilt changes its relationship to the sun, producing the seasons.

It made me wonder whether we have something like a tilt in the way we meet the world.

Maybe the important first step isn’t to straighten it.

Maybe it is simply to notice it.

I might begin noticing it in ordinary conversations.

When someone says something to me, what am I listening for?

Am I listening for criticism?

Am I listening for approval?

Am I listening for instruction?

Am I listening for disagreement?

Am I listening for something that confirms what I already believe?

Or am I simply listening to what the person is actually saying?

That seems like a very different kind of practice.

I don’t have to tell myself, “Stop being so sensitive,” or “Don’t take things as criticism.” I don’t have to force myself to hear things differently.

I can just begin to notice.

There it is. I’m hearing that as criticism.

Or:

Interesting. I was waiting for him to disagree with me.

Or:

I wasn’t really listening to what she said. I was listening for what I thought she was going to say.

That noticing may be enough to create a little space between what someone says and what I make of it.

And this is where sketching becomes interesting to me.

Rather than simply thinking about my tilt, I can take an actual experience and sketch what happens inside me when I hear it as criticism. Then I can explore what happens if I hear the same words as instruction—or simply as a comment.

The point isn’t to decide which one is right.

The point is to become familiar with my own patterns of receiving.

Over time, I may begin to recognize my tilt before it completely determines my experience.

Perhaps that’s one of the things sketching can offer: not a way to straighten ourselves out, but a way to see ourselves more clearly.

The peanut butter and the grilled cheese may have nothing to do with happiness.

Or maybe they do.

Because if I can begin to notice how I receive a simple comment about a sandwich, perhaps I can begin to notice how I receive much more important things.

And maybe happiness isn’t always about changing what happens.

Maybe sometimes it begins with noticing the tilt with which I meet what happens.