"Mom please purchase the cricket bat and I'll study properly and clean the room all week"
"Comeon u know that I share everything with you because you're my friend"
"Sweetheart it appears to me that you never pay attention to what I say"
"You're an adolescent, it doesnt mean that you know everything, you've to listen what the elders say"
" I've faced so many difficulties in life, God never listened to my prayers"
" The biggest failure of my life is that noone pays heed to what i say even in my own house"
Now they are different scenes in the play of a person's life, different acts that unfold one after the other but there is a nexus in these phases- aspiration for a listener to attend as to what we've to say. Every individual has a certain way of thinking and for him/her that thought process is distinctive from all the fellow beings, which automatically gives him/her the anxiety to share it with others. We're social beings and the social fabric has become so labyrinthine that the intermingling and interdependence has increased viz a viz the last generation. During their stint with society, the families used to be so big that it was a mini society in itself. People had way too many people around at home only to bother about others. But with migration and exposure to a wider world, society gained a more structured form and found its relevance. People found people they could relate to and talk to about what they feel, how they feel and why do they feel what they feel. It is part of the human nature that he is himself incapable of keeping everything within. Call it outsider's perspective, call it an open mind prepared for new ideas or call it a simple unburdening of thoughts, we've always looked forward for someone to share our plight with.
But as the need for an aggressive listener became stronger, so did the yardstick for him. This complaint kept exacerbating that there is noone who's actually willing to listen to all that we've to offer and say. There is a common chord that intersects which keeps saying "Nobody's listening". So as a kid my demand for a cricket bat or an extra chocolate is never thought of being catered to and my plea is never heard which makes me wonder why dont parents listen to me, after all I'm not a kid( which I eventually am at that stage).
Our voyage in the outside world begins and initially its the birds of the same feathers that flock together. We develop a rapport with like minded kids( criterion may be fav actors, fav cricketer or it may simply be the food in his/her lunchbox. We look out for refuge there and we set out with our long list of complaints about how the world is so mean to kids( Now it is a common syndrome- we conveniently choose the situations where we shrug away the idea of being a kid and the situations where the idea of being a kid comes as the only resort to evade a spanking, so we determine it as per our convenience as to whether we are little kids or not).
Even when we grow up, for many of us friends are the listeners we seek out for instead of parents. Be it the ideas that the young mind is bubbling with, the I-know-what-it takes-to-succeed thinking or the so called personal problems- ranging from post puberty hormonal overtime work or a spat with a girlfriend to the failure of finding a purpose in life , we're always on the lookout of someone to talk to. But the quench is never really satisfied maybe because almost everyone whom we want to talk to, is undergoing the same phase and wants to talk about his/her problems as well.So again the feeling reiterates that why isnt there anyone who's willing to listen to what I've to say.
A different scenario but suffering from the same syndrome is the relationship of a man and a woman( I restrict it to lovers and married couples here). They are fundamentally so different in everything that after the hunky dory phase of the relationship is passe, the time comes of building a sphere of compatibility, a domain of adjustments so to say. One of the prime facets of this is to listen to the partner.
Now men by default aren't great listeners and women have a knack of sharing what comes to their minds. Now this chasm can really deepen if not catered to quickly with a firm bridge to mellow down the temperaments. The failure to do so is what we witness in the form of common marriage counselling ,seven year itch or moving out of the relationship. There is a common complaint amongst the fairer sex that Men just dont listen and that puts a roadblock in the process of ameliorating compatibility. To put it in a nutshell, not finding a listener certainly spells doom's day even here.
It is found to be a common phenomena in social circles for people to go gaga about their kids. How often have we not witnessed in parties that men and women keep lionizing the laurels of their wards and the listeners just dont seem interested because they've a story to tell about their own child. So things like "Mere bete ka IIT mein admission hua" " meri beti ko job mein raise mila" or "humne toh keh diya ki US mein kuch saal hi rehna" are met with cold and indifferent reception.
The listener stays there out of courtesy, but the bodylanguage and eyes wandering elsewhere clearly resonte the please-complete-your-story-i've-one-of-mine-to-narrate-as-well message. So it becomes agonizing for parents as for them the kids at home dont listen to them out of pure resistance of adolescence, and in the social circle noone actually cares as to whether your ward has been there and done that.
A friend of mine was given this assignment to interview a group of corporate hochos to talk about their journey. What came as a rude shock to her and to me as well when she narrated the experience was people around their 40's pouring their hearts out in front of her(a student) describing the pages of their personal lives. Now what exactly must have led them to do it? They surely didnt expect a 21 year old to give them a solution to the crisis in their lives. Was it simply the solace of telling everything out to a complete stranger who wouldn't be judgemental or was it simply an irresistible outburst of what we perceive as mid life crisis?The outburst may be shocking but brings us back to the fundamental hypothesis- people want someone to listen to them.
But why do they need anyone else to do it? Are they too scared to talk to themselves( introspect)? Do they know that they may be in for a rude honest answer if the conversation is carried with oneself? Is it simply nothing but the fact that they are looking out for sympathy and no judgement because nothing else explains spilling the beans of your personal life to strangers. We do see people around us who love to talk and who if neglected or ignored for a while during a group meetup become restless and their bodylanguage tends to go completely haywire. They just cant have others not listening to them. Why is that exactly? Why so much anxiety to be heard? Maybe its just an avenue to bring something out of the system completely.
Maybe that explains aggressive listeners become friends fast with people. People tend to repel the ones who like to talk more about themselves in the first meet and prefer those who give the oppotunity for him to talk.
Leave aside humans, we constantly crib that even the Almighty doesnt listen to us and conveniently neglects what we really want. This quest for a listener is ubiquitous and no matter how much we deny it, we want it. Call it a syndrome, call it insecurity or call it a way of life, the bottom line is we all crave for listeners and love it even more when they echo what we say. Maybe we are not really looking for a mirror but just a karaoke!!! So the knocking on the doors is going to continue....Anybody there?
