VERONICA KUFFEL

Listen Like Grandma

Driveway Melody – Rayland Baxter, 2012

There’s this phrase that goes, “God gave you one mouth and two ears so you could listen twice as much as you talk.” People talk a lot more than they listen, and because of that, there’s this huge gap in how we communicate.

Everyone has to fight to be heard, but no one is listening. Or, actively listening. It’s an idea that a lot of people take pretty lightly, and because of that, it’s a lost art. You don’t find many people these days who just sit and listen.

Luckily, my grandma was one of the few in my own life. Carol Kuffel grew up in a family with fourteen children, so you’d think that she had learned to fight for attention, for her own voice to be heard. But she mostly keeps to herself. She travels as far as Singapore, reads roughly two books a week and is a fiend in the kitchen. But she doesn’t talk much; instead, she listens.

My grandma says things with intention. When she opens her mouth, you know she has a story or a piece of advice that’ll change your life somehow. She asks questions sparingly, only when she really wants to know an answer. And when people talk to her, she listens. Carol gives them the space to speak. 

I admire her so much for that. It’s easy to ramble about yourself or things going on in your life. It’s easy to forget that the world doesn’t revolve around you–that you’re only one piece of the puzzle. You can’t solve it on your own, and that’s why we communicate with others to fill in the gaps of life. 

But I think the main part of it is that it’s easy to force conversation, to fill quiet with words. It gives conversation a more mechanical feel and the nature of it deteriorates. By choosing her words carefully, she respects the silence between exchanges. Not only that, but my grandma can effectively control conversations by accepting the silence. You’d think that talking puts you in charge of communication, but really, it’s listening and asking of questions.

In my own life, I struggle with social anxiety, which in part, means I focus on a lot of things during a conversation, most of them aren’t that important–pointless even. I worry a lot about how I look, what I say, how I’ll respond to their words. Basically, I try really hard not to look or sound stupid. And because of that, I miss out on effective and meaningful dialogue. 

I’m so focused on my own role that I forget that something as simple as a conversation has two speakers. And when that second speaker talks, they’re more focused on being heard than how you respond. It all comes down to the big realization–people’s words actually mean something to them, and they could also mean a lot to you.

My grandma inspires me as a communicator because she cares more about what other people have to say. She understands that this simple act of conversation is essential to human connection, that talking is not something you do just to hear your own voice. I try my best to emulate my grandma’s listening habits because they’re key to deeper, more meaningful communication.