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“To answer before listening— that is folly and shame.”
–– Proverbs 18:13
“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry…” –– James 1:19
“Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”
–– Romans 10:17
“Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to advice.”
–– Proverbs 12:15
“Let anyone with ears listen.”
–– Matthew 11:15
I am not a gum chewer so I cannot speak to the theory of whether one can truly walk and chew gum at the same time. However, I am increasingly aware of the ubiquitous efforts to master the skill of listening and scrolling at the same time. Whether tolerating tech hiccups and microphone usurpers during the marathon Zoom meeting; abiding the stream of consciousness monologue of the loquacious friend who took Verizon’s promise of unlimited talk and text literally and aggressively; or sitting in the rear of the auditorium, outside the lecturer’s field of vision –– the temptation of the touch screen may be too much to bear. Certainly, I can digest the speechifier and follow the Cardinals’ sixth inning at the same time. Alas, I have tried it more than once and the data confirms that I most certainly cannot.
We like to think we are multitaskers when in reality we are fractional participants. What we see as multitasking, others perceive as distracted indifference. A common feeling among people is the sense that they are undervalued, unseen, unheard, or ignored. Those feelings are confirmed whenever it becomes apparent to someone that we are feigning attention to their presence.
When riding in the family car as a child, as the tires rhythmically clicked to the grooves in the pavement, the silence would periodically be pierced by a shriek from the front seat –– “Jerry!!!.” My dad was a fine man but a poor driver, and when his attention was piqued by a billboard or a farmhouse off in the distance, his hands would follow his eyes in the direction of the landmark. Unfortunately, those hands were on the steering wheel, and the highway on which we were driving refused to follow his eyes, or his hands, or the steering wheel. Hence, the periodic shriek, which triggered the jerking of the wheel and the return of station wagon to its rightful place between the lines.
While not as consequential as the roadside distraction, the same phenomenon takes place when the scrolling finger lures us away from the content, if not the sound, of someone’s words. Our brains follow the finger, and quickly we are no longer within the lane of the conversation. An article in Psychology Today observed that, “Student distraction is the top learning obstacle reported by teachers and is related to inferior recall, lower achievement, and learner fatigue.” (Bobby Hoffman, Psychology Today) The same could be said about the obstacle to any relationship –– distraction. The article went on to report that one sign of whether someone is listening to you or not is to observe the size of their pupils. We may think we are successfully feigning attention to someone, but our eyes betray us because we cannot control the size of our pupils when our interest is aroused by what we are seeing or hearing. The more we are engaged, the more our pupils dilate. Thus, if we are feigning attention, and we get called out, you can bet our pupils suddenly dilate as we are jerked back from indifference to engagement. Much like the station wagon being jerked back into its lane by the sound of –– “Jerry!!!” –– we return our attention to the person needing it or asking for it.
Communication requires attention to keep us within the lanes of relationship, conversation, love, and compassion. In relationship, in conversation, in the presence of any child of God, and certainly in the presence of our Lord, may our pupils be prodigious.
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