For our memory, compared to the complexity of the impressions which it has to face while we are listening, is infinitesimal, as brief as the memory of a man who in his sleep thinks of a thousand things and at once forgets them, or as that of a man in his second childhood who cannot recall, a minute afterwards, what one has just been saying to him. Probably what is wanting, the first time, is not comprehension but memory. If one had indeed, as one supposes, received no impression from the first hearing, the second, the third would be equally ‘first hearings’ and there would be no reason why one should understand it any better after the tenth. And so it is not wrong to speak of hearing a thing for the first time. And yet when, later on, this sonata had been played over to me two or three times I found that I knew it quite well. “ften one listens and hears nothing, if it is a piece of music at all complicated to which one is listening for the first time. See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love So I ask myself, What is this story demanding of me? What will I do now that I know this?” As Hannah Arendt says, 'One trains one's imagination to go visiting.' When the story is done, we must return to our skin, our own worldview, and notice how we have been changed by our visit. As soon as I notice feeling unmoored, I try to pull myself back into my body, like returning home. Sometimes I start to lose myself in their story. I try to understand what matters to them, not what I think matters. The most critical part of listening is asking what is at stake for the other person. I just need to feel safe enough to stay curious. But I also know that it's okay if I don't feel very much for them at all. Empathy is cognitive and emotional-to inhabit another person's view of the world is to feel the world with them.

I am always partially listening to the thoughts in my own head when others are speaking, so I consciously quiet my thoughts and begin to listen with my senses.

When I really want to hear another person's story, I try to leave my preconceptions at the door and draw close to their telling. The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life My mother, however, had lost the ability to speak.”

Without further ado, he hastily scribbled out a prescription for some codeine and was gone. I almost ordered a beef-jerky maker! Give me something, or I'm going to use your calf muscles to make the first batch!' I have spent the last four days with my mother who is addicted to QVC, watching jewelry shows, doll shows and make-up shows. 'I don't think you understand,' I explained. If I didn't get good drugs and get them now, it was straight to Shooter's World and then Walgreens pharmacy for me. I couldn't even go to the bathroom on my own, I hadn't slept in three weeks, and my normally sunny cheery disposition had turned into that of a very rabid dog. 'But I wouldn't take more than nine a day.' 'You can take some over the counter ibuprofen,' he suggested. 'What can I take for the pain?' I asked him before he got out the door. He ordered X rays then started to leave the room. He bent my right knee this way and that, up and down, all the way out to the side and in. Bone Specialist came in, made me stand up and hobble across the room, checked my reflexes, and then made me lie down on the table.

Quotes about listening and hearing