The Game of Listening

Rethinking what it means to truly hear others—and ourselves—in a world full of noise.

In the past few weeks, I have begun to realize that what I thought I knew, I didn’t.

Part of the realization comes from the writings of Irvin D. Yalom, an M.D. and professor emeritus of psychiatry at Stanford University, and part from the words of a Knoxville high school teacher. The words are in a book she gave me before she passed away. That book was Love’s Executioner, by Yalom.

“Dear Coach Doebler— Thanks to you I am beginning to figure out which direction the ball game is going, and the game isn’t over. You’ll be glad to know your contract had been extended indefinitely and I plan to make it to the post season… Now I only need to figure out what the game is.” -Marylyn.

I am reading this fifteen years after her “ball game” ended, and though she left us too young, she is still teaching me to this day. Most of the book is about ten patients whom Yalom saw professionally. For perhaps obvious reasons, seldom do psychiatrists write about their work with individuals. In Love’s Executioner, what he is really writing about is not so much the patient, but rather what he is learning about himself and how he is learning to rethink what he has been taught.

The case that struck me—and is still stumping me—is about a 45-year-old woman whose neurosurgeon husband was killed in an auto accident. She came to Yalom seven years after the accident, still grieving his loss and unable to move on in her life. After three years of therapy, Yalom believed that he had gotten nowhere in helping her, so instead he suggested she see a hypnotist whom he knew well. She felt as though Yalom was rejecting her, but she agreed to see this hypnotist only if he was present with her.

Together they saw the hypnotist three times, and Yalom recalls in one chapter that during a session his patient smiled not once but twice. He realized in that moment how a simple smile could alter the entire emotional landscape of the room.

Yep—Two Smiles

The title of that chapter was “Yep—Two Smiles.” While Yalom thought at first he understood what those smiles meant, it was ultimately those smiles that led him to discover that, after three years of therapy together, he didn’t actually understand his patient at all. In the meetings that followed with his patient and the hypnotist, he found those smiles were not what he, the hypnotist, nor even the woman herself thought them to be. This led Yalom to write, “Each time we see the face… it is our own ideas of him which we recognize.”

In other words, when we think we know someone, it is merely our perception of the person we know. This is true even with the person we love and have been married to for over sixty years. This led me to test out Yalom’s theory, and I asked my wife Nancy if she thought I truly understood how she thinks. The answer was a prompt “no.” I then tried to improve my understanding by asking questions, to which she replied, “See, you did not listen.”

I have seen folks for over fifty years, backed by extensive theological (and comic) training, which led me to believe I could genuinely listen to what I was hearing. I was jolted at the possibility that what I was hearing was not actually what I was being told. This proved true with my very patient, well-spoken wife, formerly a psychiatric nurse for over 40 years. Let the evidence speak for itself: what I was hearing was, and still is, what my life experience has taught me to hear.

So how do I learn to hear differently—especially in a world where there is so much deafening noise? How do I figure out “in which direction the ball game is going,” as Marylyn had written fifteen years earlier?

Maybe the answer is in the question. Like Marylyn said at the end of her letter, “I only need to figure out what the game is.” And like another thinker wrote, “Happiness is what you think about—not the stuff you have.”

Each of us has a different road to travel to do this. Like myself, perhaps you’re starting down that road later in life. Regardless of when that time comes, the destination may be unclear—but we can be sure that the trip will be quite a ride.