The Sickness of Waiting for Your Turn to Speak

Watch two people "talking" at a table.

It looks like a dialogue. One mouth moves, then the other mouth moves. It looks like a tennis match of ideas, a back-and-forth exchange of energy.

But if you could plug a speaker into their minds, you would hear the tragedy.

You would hear that Person A is speaking. And while they are speaking, Person B is not listening. Person B is reloading.

Person B is scanning the sentence for a keyword they can use to launch their own story. Person B is mentally rehearsing their next witty comeback. Person B is nodding, their face arranged in a mask of interest, but behind their eyes, they are screaming: “Finish! Finish so I can speak! My thought is more important!”

This is not a conversation. This is two monologues crashing into each other.

This is the sickness of the modern ego. We are terrified of silence, and we are obsessed with relevance. We believe that if we are not speaking, we do not exist. To listen—to truly listen—feels like a death. It feels like submission.

So we compete. We interrupt. We finish each other's sentences, thinking we are being helpful, but really we are just being impatient. We treat conversation like a dominance hierarchy where the person who speaks the most wins.

But here is the truth: You cannot learn anything while your mouth is moving.

When you speak, you are only repeating what you already know. You are spinning in a circle of your own old data.

Listening is the only way to expand. But true listening is not just "hearing the words." A recording device can hear words. Siri can hear words.

True listening is a spiritual act of emptying yourself.

To listen, you must set aside your autobiography. You must set aside your opinions. You must set aside your desperate need to be smart, or funny, or right. You must become a hollow bamboo. You must become a nothingness.

You must allow the other person's reality to enter you, unmodified and unjudged.

This is rare. It is so rare that when it happens, it feels like a miracle.

Have you ever been listened to? Really listened to? By someone who wasn't waiting to give you advice, or top your story with a better one? It is intoxicating. You feel your soul expand. You feel discovered. You find yourself saying things you didn't even know you knew, because the other person’s silence pulled the truth out of you.

At Heaffles, we want to foster the art of the "Empty Listener."

We don't want you to just gather your bodies here. We want you to gather your attention.

The next time you are sitting across from a friend, catch yourself.

Catch the moment your mind unhooks from their words and starts writing your response. Catch the moment you feel the urge to interrupt.

Stop.

Take a sip of coffee. Swallow the urge.

Look at them. Say to yourself: "I am not here to win. I am here to witness."

Let there be a pause after they finish speaking. A long, luxurious pause. Don't jump in. Let their words land. Let them echo.

If you stop waiting for your turn to speak, you might find that for the first time in your life, you are actually hearing the world. And it is much more interesting than anything you were about to say.

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