I see you

                         This weekend we bought a new car. Our lives for months now had been straddled between travel baseball games and gymnastics and this became increasingly more and more complicated to jiggle with one car. A new car was a nice solution to help us keep our sanity. My husband, who happens to be a wiz at numbers and anything related to savings, played the local car dealers against each other until he could get no further and in the end went with the one salesman who not only gave him the best offer, but the one who best listened to his needs. Listening, I have found recently, is one of those skills most people give cursory attention to, yet, one that can make a world of difference in our relationships. 

                 What baffles me is that becoming a salesperson is not rocket science. What trips up most of them It seems is that they think there is a "formula" to being a good salesperson. Just as in dating, for example, people believe there is a formula for getting all the dates, when in fact, the formula is a non-formula approach. Now, before you think me crazy with all this zen-ish mumbo-jumbo hear me out. What I mean is that in believing  there's a formula to follow we get so preoccupied in our own minds with following the steps to this formula that we fail to actually take in the information from the source (In this case the customer). Also, just like in dating, we think we need to be, say, or even act a certain way get results, when all we need to do is pay attention to the one before us. 

      Now, back to the salesperson for a minute. My husband just wanted two very easy things, he wanted (1) transparency, and he wanted a (2) guarantee that the price would not go up once we got to the dealership. I overheard half-a-dozen conversations between my husband and these gentlemen where he's simply asking for a line-by-line breakdown of all charges, simple enough, right? nope. One young dealer took this request as a personal challenge and with an attitude said, "I've been around the block, so we can't commit unless you have a letter from the other dealer, don't worry, just come on down and we'll take care of you". "Just come on down" is not something you say to someone that has an inherent distrust of sellers. Had he been listening he would have known this easy! It's no surprise then that the dealer we did go with actually heard what was needed and listed all the fees all the way down to the smallest charge. Not rocket science....again, all he did was listen and gave my husband what he wanted....the freaking price! 

       Listening has been a huge topic of importance to me lately in my personal life. The minute I unravel one parallel a few others begin to appear. There seems to be a never-ending set of parallels and connections that appear daily. On so many levels listening has made all the difference. One way, for example, is in listening to my body. Again, "Listening to ones body" is an act everyone loosely thinks they follow and yet, we rarely do this for real for any extended period of time. Just 2 days ago, I chose to just do away with my traditional marathon training plan and I feel so amazing breaking away from this rigid training plan which was essentially not working for my body. Had I kept going I surely would have gotten injured or sick. I am more of an expert on my own body than anyone else out there and I needed to own that through action, so I changed course. No big deal, I have been essentially studying my own body now for years, I should feel fully confident in making decisions relating to its health and training. 

             Listening in personal relationships is also one of those golden skills that could easily make or break any relationship. I have had several inner breakthroughs lately in my many personal relationships. I have learned so much. For example, I realized that one's expression of discontent in a relationship should not be met with more a wall, instead acceptance of that truth must be practiced if true want of understanding, congruence and clarity exits in that relationship. Yes, most times more than not, one's message of discontent comes wrapped in anger, or awkwardness or even malice, yet, that should not in any way ever negate the fact that the discontent exists. Simply because there might be a disagreement with the method of delivery or even the message itself does not make the message itself wrong or less worthy of our attention. In other words, when someone we claim to love says they don't like something that is happening, whether it be wrapped in sweet words or anger, we must try hard to listen for the true, sometimes hidden essence of the message. Listening in this case, although it cannot be seen happening, is very much a verb, it's an action. Listening I have found is the act of allowing the message to take space in our hearts without the visceral need to react, retaliate, change or mold the message or the person. It's a very tough practice, one I work on daily still. As grown humans,  we all have faced experiences we'd rather not over the years, yet, I have found that fighting the message, or even the package in which the message came in only withers away at my soul. Some I have also learned, repackage the message so that it seems more palatable, more easy to swallow, per se. There is hope though. I have found that the minute I stop fighting, take myself out of the equation, and actually hear the message with my heart I can then begin to heal and move on. Some book I read somewhere call it "practicing ALLOW". This practice is essentially a practice in saying yes all the time and just absorbing all that comes with an open heart and mind. 

              I share this here, on my running blog because I have learned most of this material from running. In running, you encounter hills, valleys, roots, darkness, heat, humidity. To continue on steadily we simply must move on and in time the path changes and becomes something else, then something else, new challenge, new battles, etc. Each hill in running is met with a "yes", an acceptance, no matter how tough, no matter how painful, we keep on moving forward. 

            In good relationships, whether they be in our friendships or with our parents or our siblings or with our children, we begin the work of listening and truly loving the minute we stop making up stories about who we want them to be instead. Like they say in the old familiar marriage vow, "For better or for worse". I think this phrase is about an invitation to really seek the true person you married (and this does not need to apply to a spouse, could be anyone really). It's an invitation to shut off the story we carry about who people around us are and begin seeing the real person before you. This is not about love or non-love, it's about shutting off the the fictitious version we foment in our minds about the world, it's about being being brave enough to be fully present in every interaction so that our very lives become more genuine, real and meaningful and clear. 
       
                    You can practice deeply listening to anyone in your life from your worse enemy all the way up to your dearest friend by simply negating your first version you narrate of their story and seeing it as just that, your version. Deeply listening makes no promises of any kind though, it is not one of those warm and fuzzy promises of rainbows and candy canes. Most times, the real message is harsh and ruthless, sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's a huge kick in the pants. Makes sense, why else would so many try so hard to not see the real world, it's easier to just choose and pick parts of people, than take them as they are, less messy right?. But what deeply listening DOES do for us is keeps us sane, makes us connect with others on the most intimate levels. We can choose to be brave and take a peek, and begin to see things clearly or we can choose to feed on our narrative of others, always move through life wondering why our version does not match their actions. 

            As I end this, I am working on listening more to my almost-teen son. As our kids get older they talk about themselves less and less. So it really becomes a battle against the clock. I can try to connect with him in ways I am told by society to connect with him and keep jamming the proverbial square peg in a round hole or I can stop my mental chatter of what I think HE NEEDS and really try to hear who this little young man is before me, what his fears are, what his passions are. Those gifts from him will not come if I continue wearing the "hat" I've been wearing. I loved that blockbuster alien movie, whose name evades me right now, in which their greeting to each other is "I see you". How amazing it must be to truly be seen by another and still be loved. That is the message I want to convey to him and I believe in my heart the key to opening up his inner world comes from that one thought. That really should be the ultimate goal of a relationship...despite all you see, you are still accepted. YES, I see (and hear) all of you and I say YES.