What if You are Too Full to Listen?

I saw A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood today and still feel swollen, the way the body feels after it was slapped—or kissed—repeatedly.

I watched the whole film on the edge of tears, and sometimes through tears. The scene where Tom Hanks’ voice reads off the names of people Tom (as Fred Rogers) was praying for while while he, Tom as Fred, swims laps had me wiping my face with my sleeve.

Tom Hanks is generally spectacular as an actor, and at one point when Tom Hanks looked into the camera for an extended period, I had leaned over to my daughter and said, “He’s channeling Mr. Rogers right there.” It was in the eyes. Imagine if you were deep-sea diving and a whale swam right up to you and looked at you steadily, took in all of you and all of your surroundings and all of your story until you confused the whale’s eye with God’s eye as your body registered what it means to be seen through the eyes of love. That’s what I felt as Tom Hanks/Mr. Rogers looked at the camera.

(Or an elephant. Something old and noble and holy beyond imagination.)

The other day I was talking to an adoptee about speaking publicly, on a stage, about adoption. “The problem with that,” she said, “is that then I would have to listen.”

I’ve been thinking about that even since.

Have you ever been on a date where the person talks almost the entire time and doesn’t seem to notice that you have said almost nothing? Or with a parent or a friend or a teacher?

There is something so terribly lonely about being talked at.

It’s one reason I avoid adoptee conferences. At their worst, these conferences can be reduced to a bunch of people who are both triggered by all the trauma in the room and excited by the opportunity to dump their story on people who haven’t yet learned to avoid the trap that is them telling their story. These exchanges are not relational. They are more like one person vomiting, and one person serving as the vase into which the vomit is directed.

When people are telling you their story, The Old Man and The Sea Story, the one that hangs like an albatross from their neck, something happens to their eyes: the spark goes out and there is a flattened, absent look, like they are reading a script written on the inside of their head. The person looks both bored and desperate. They aren’t even really looking at you—they are looking at their script that they have read six million times. You are just there so they can have a place to try to, finally, get this story to stick outside of their body so they can stop living like a robot.

I know this because I’m one of those people. The last time I was on Haley Radke’s (life-changing) podcast Adoptees On, and she asked me to tell my story, I forget what I said, but I remember thinking, Don’t go there today. Say something new. The problem is I didn’t know what was new. I just knew what my story was, and so maybe there was dead air or maybe I tried to talk about the story of what I was doing in present day. I don’t remember. I just remember fighting not to regurgitate the story of I was born and then my mother gave me away.

I tell that story all the time. Still. It’s a compulsion. It feels necessary, like wearing a name tag to a party.

When your brain is trying to answer questions: Who am I? Why did she leave me? Am I lovable? Am I safe? Does this stuffy nose mean I’m dying? it’s hard not to talk about the stinking bird hanging from a cord around your neck (check out The Old Man and the Sea if you think I am being literal). Telling your story can feel like trying to save your own life, like trying to keep yourself from disappearing.

“Hug me like you’re drowning,” I told my friend, joking, and he hugged me, pushing down on the top of my head with one hand. I think that’s what it’s like to carry a story inside of you that you feel no one understands. You will take anyone down in your effort to feel heard.

When you carry a story inside of you that aches for a listening, patient ear, the last thing you want to do is be that ear for someone else’s story. It’s a sickening feeling, when you are both so empty and full you barely feel human, and someone approaches you as if you’re a goose they can stick the tube of their story into and force feed because all you are really is a plate full of pâté to them.

When someone talks at you they hurt you. You can choke on too much language. You can die from loneliness as someone goes on and on about their past and doesn’t even notice you have gone wobbly on your feet because you have taken too much of them in and you are forgetting how to breathe. When people talk at you they also hurt themselves because the connection one would hope to get from communicating doesn’t happen when a conversation is not mutual. It’s like hoping to stop the flames that are engulfing you by rolling on air. Nothing changes, and you are probably making the situation worse.

As a writing coach, I listen for when people go on auto-pilot as they are talking to me about their stories, because I know that’s where the window of opportunity is. It’s the place to get them to stop, to take a deep breath, and to use new different language in order to create a story that sticks. It’s the place where they can reclaim their voice and get off the spin of this is a recording.

Why tell the same story again and again and again? I mean this earnestly. Why? What do you hope to get if you tell the same story to more than three people? This is not a criticism because it’s something I do all the time—recycle stories. It’s a heart-felt question. Is it a funny story that makes people laugh so it’s an easy way to connect? Is it a story that surprising people and gets their attention and possibly leads to a friendship? Is it who you are? If you could say anything to the person you are talking to, anything at all, is this story the one thing you really want to say to this person in particular. Why?

Part of thinking about what you are going to say (or write) involves thinking about audience. Have they heard your story before? What do they have to gain by hearing you tell this story? Are you taking something from them or giving something to them? Is your story acid or butter? Will it burn or soothe? And, if it is acid, is it a story that needs to be told? If the person you are talking to has a cupful of energy for the day, and hearing your story requires a quarter of a cup of energy because of all it asks of the listener, is it worth the telling? Is the listener’s life better for the hearing of your story?

Relational means that at least two people’s needs are taken into consideration, and for this reason, speaking without wanting to listen is ultimately a lonely business. Either new friends are needed, ones who say things worth listening to, or you need new things to say because the responses you are getting are boring you.

I don’t love to talk for extended periods. And so, ultimately, I don’t love to listen for extended periods, also. I love not talking, and I love not listening, and so there is that, too: the glorious peace of white space or silence.

What is it you are so desperate to say? What happens if you could only say it one more time your entire life? Would you say it differently? What if you wrote it down, called it a book, and published it?

That could be cool.

I did it.

You could, too.