Listening

Fear has rightly swept our country. We are terrified that whether we are at school, at church, or just out, someone is going to use an assault rifle to kill as many people as possible. Given our recent history, this is a legitimate concern. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to consider the possibilities and plan accordingly. However, fear is taking over our ability to plan well for those possibilities and to find a way to eliminate these horrific tragedies.

Fear is an emotion I have battled with for as long as I can remember. I am intimately acquainted with its pitfalls and its benefits. Fear was given to us as a gift to sense when we were in danger so that we could avoid it when possible. It is the exact instinct one needs when facing precarious situations. Even in the right circumstances though, fear has some disadvantages. First, fear alerts our brain to focus entirely on how to escape from imminent harm. All of our thoughts, senses, and abilities are fixated on what is threatening us. We lose the ability to hear what others are saying to us, we lose the ability to think through options carefully and with scrutiny, and we lose the ability to form our thoughts coherently. When in danger, or completely consumed by fear, we lose the ability to be rational and gain the ability to escape.

When running from a wild animal or protecting ourselves from an armed robber, we don’t need the ability to listen to others while critically thinking. We simply need to be able to save our lives. Fear does become a problem though when we are consumed by it in a non-threatening situation. When fear becomes our initial response to every stimulus we come to a place where we are no longer thinking through our words or our actions. Once upon a time I had a supervisor who didn’t just make me nervous, he scared the wits out of me. Just the sound of his voice would cause my heart to beat faster, my breathing to become labored, and my hands to shake. Every single time this happened, it also meant that all of the sudden, I had no ability to say and do the next right thing. I would freeze in a desperate desire to get away from the situation. While this sounds like a ridiculous example, it was very true. It was like my brain shut down and nothing mattered but getting out.

As a country, we are wrapped up in our fear for our kids and for ourselves. No place feels sacred or safe. When we begin to have discussions about what can be done to change the current environment that fear bubbles up and boils over. What we believe about gun rights, mental health, parenting, and many other divisive issues becomes all that we can see, hear, and think. Our fear prevents us from listening to someone who offends our beliefs. We shut them down and then we shut them out because we believe so deeply that we are right and that what they are saying could cause us, and those we love, harm. The problem is that nothing gets done that way. Instead, we split down the middle and stay exactly in the same place we have been because no one is willing to give up their stance – even a millimeter.

It is no secret that I have some very tightly held beliefs. I speak of them often on this blog as well as social media. What I am learning is that I can still hold those beliefs while listening to the person across from me tell me about their opposite beliefs. If I lay down my fear, and don’t allow myself to be threatened by ideas other than my own, I hear things I didn’t expect. Sometimes it just gives me food for thought, sometimes it changes my mind, and sometimes it strengthens my belief that I was right from the beginning. Whatever the result, the other person feels heard and seen and valued. Everyone I know wants to be heard and seen and valued. Listening has another positive outcome, it allows two people to think through a problem rationally and see if there is a chance to compromise. Without compromise we simply have a stale mate.

I wake up five days a week and enter a high school as the librarian. My two teenagers come with me to the same school. Every single day that we enter this building, there is the very real threat that someone could enter with a gun. A little over 500 students enter that same building. I know fear. I love my own children and I love the students that I serve. I not only have a vested interest in seeing the current climate changed, my heart desires that change almost more than any other issue. I am pleading with you to be a part of the solution. None of us will be a part of the solution until we are able to move fear out of the way to get to a place where we hear each other. I wish that the solution to this problem was as simple as providing better mental health services, or banning guns, or teaching students not to bully other students. It just isn’t that easy. There is not one cure all out there. Each time a person has entered a building and killed other people, there have been a host of reasons that brought them to that point. Each time, there are a varying number of ways that might have prevented the tragedy. Each time there are different people behind the trigger. Just like you and I, each of those people is unique. We must find a way to fix a multitude of problems. In order to do so, we are going to have to listen to each other and see how we can come together to combat the issue.

In the library at my high school, where I am the librarian, we have a large number of puzzles, some completed and some waiting to be finished. Looking at the pieces to those puzzles created a visual for me. Solving this problem will take finding and putting together all the different pieces of the puzzle. We are going to have to educate ourselves on what pieces those are and then we are going to have to work together to place them in the correct order. The longer we keep fighting over which piece is more important, the longer we wait for a solution. The longer we argue over who gets to put the corner pieces in and who gets to put the title together, and who gets to look at the picture on the box, the longer we wait for a solution. The truth is, we don’t have anymore time. We cannot wait any longer. Every second that passes is too long. This is not a subject we can keep fighting about. We are going to have to choose to listen. Now.