Listen To Me

Listed among "human needs" are such necessities as, food, water, shelter etc. To this list I would like to add: the need to be
listened to, or, if I wanted to be even more specific, the need to be really heard. I feel that there are millions of people in our world, who are like plants that have been hidden away from the sunlight, for far too long, because they have not been really
listened to. What accounts for this particular famine across our world?. Human beings are naturally geared to talking...
expression is an important part of our human make-up...helping our survival...and everybody knows...repression does not
contribute positively to our health. So far, so good...but...we also need to communicate with each other, and that requires us
to take turns talking and listening. So, what seems to be a natural tendency, for most of us to talk a lot, has to be partnered
with learning to listen to what others have to say. Over the years in restaurants and other places where three or four people
were sitting together...I've noticed how often one voice can be heard droning on for thirty, forty or more minutes, without any other voices being heard. I've observed this and other exhibitions of too much talking by one person, over the years, enough, to call this "talk compulsion syndrome", if it hasn't been called that already. In my own case, with my mind a lot of the
time swirling with ideas and responses, I have been a prime candidate for talking too much, and so I have had to gradually
teach myself, to learn to consciously intervene, when I have been talking, and start to listen to the person with whom I am
conversing. It is not a stretch to elevate listening to others, to "gift of love" status, as by doing so we actknowledge the
existence of another, and give consolation where otherwise there might have only been, isolation and alienation. Having in my own life known well what it is to be "not really heard", some years ago I finally rose up and wrote a song with these words: "Listen to me...I don't need your money...your body, your soul, neither your mind...I just need your ear and heart a minute...and I'll be there if you should need mine...Listen to me and I'll try to keep in mind...the gift that you give's a precious thing...never to be just my blind obsession...as I let my mouth go rambling...Is that too much?...I don't think so...Is that too much...I don't think so...Listen to me...................!" Quester.