Your Attention, Please

How did you know the name of my college friend, she asked. Because you mentioned her to me a few months ago, I replied.

Of all the things we are asked to do in life, paying attention is the easiest and possibly the most important. It’s just a matter of being present and honoring the other person by listening. It is a habit I got into about eighty-five years ago.

My father told the story of how, in kindergarten, his teacher announced to the class they must pay attention. My Dad was raised in poverty and thought he had heard the teacher say that they must pay a pencil. He went home crying until a friend assured him there was nothing to be paid. That word pay had distorted his hearing.

However, the message was etched in his bones. Attention is the price for learning and relating and it is free. That lesson also became my words-to-live-by. 

( I can also claim the legacy of that imaginary pencil. My image of him is with a short stub of a yellow number two resting on his ear. I inherited that pencil and discovered myself along the way).

The other lesson in listening entered my consciousness by the back door. It was clear, by the 7th grade, that I could not carry a tune from here to there. Even though I sang in the shower to my delight, I was tone deaf. As such, I was consigned to the last row and designated a Listener. I excelled in lip-synching and became a world-class listener.

Listening is not just hearing words, it entails what is unsaid and knowing the difference between what is important from what is more important. Add to this the full body gestures but that doesn't work too well over the phone. It means being fully present; not rehearsing what you want to say while half present. Sometimes it means knowing when to shut up. Other times it calls for reflecting back to the speaker or probing but always in a natural flow as when attention is being paid and not as a disingenuous formula.

There is a line in Arthur Miller’s brilliant play Death Of A Salesman when Willy Loman’s wife scolds her son for disrespecting his father. Attention must be paid, she shouts. I never forgot that moment in the tragedy of this beleaguered salesman. All of us are selling ourselves or better yet, just being and we deserve each other’s attention.

It needs to be said that our retentive memory wanes in our dotage. I can almost see yesterday's conversation fading into oblivion. My attention needs tending. Attention must be paid but allowances must also be made.