stardustcboy's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everyone Talks...No One Listens at times i feel that i am both blessed and cursed. not that i'm any different than anyone else. i think that we all share this same fate to one degree or another. perhaps it is my understanding of this that makes me feel so...alien...sometimes. i've found in my life that i'm the kind of person that people just tend to open up to. i could walk alone into a bar and at the end of the night leave with a new friend and a half a dozen stories from all sorts of people, from all walks of life, from the mundane to the funny to the surreal to the tragic. i've heard stories of loss and sorrow, of irony and hilarity, of joy and pleasure, of pain and darkness, loss and redemption. some days i feel the weight of them pressing upon me. my heart holds secrets from scores of lives. things told in passing...in dark dive bars...in quiet apartments...in cars coming and going... i don't know why it is this way. i don't know why people - strangers, friends, family - seem to find it easy to just talk to me. i think sometimes it is because i just listen. i think that people need a place to put things, a vessal in which to carry their experiences...or maybe not a vessal...but a mirror...a sounding board. like if they didn't tell it or if it wasn't heard it's like it wasn't real. that by communicating it to someone it lends solidarity to their experience. yet, overall, i think that it is because most of the time people talk but very rarely, if ever, do they listen. we are all so full of judgements, misgivings, condemnations, and opinions. we love to spout them off to whoever, whenever. we like to drop them on others to make ourselves feel better, superior, like our lives mean something, that we're more than just slowly decaying flesh, that somehow we are closer to God or the truth than the next person...that we will go to heaven and they will go to hell... it justifies our mistakes, eases our regrets, anesthetizes our pain and sorrow, and we can laugh at others' misfortune...the same misfortune that in the end we all share. you see, after my limited time here on earth one thing i have noticed is that after a while all the stories start sounding the same. i realize that in the end we all feel the same things. there are differences in time and character and intensity to one degree or another...but overall, in the end, it is the same needs, dreams, desires, hopes, fears, errors that drive us. i've learned that age is no factor, that someone who is 16 can feel something that a 21, 43, 56, or 83 year old can feel. gender doesn't matter either. women's hearts break just like mens. i've found that race is also unimportant, a black man bleeds just like me, and i bleed just like an arab. so in the end i just sort of marvel at it. it is both wondrous and sad. that no matter who and no matter where the Great Equalizer always comes in one form or another...and we all so desperately cling to what miserable/happy/etc. lives that we may have...yet in so doing we close ourselves to others. they reach hands out to us and we push them away. "get a job! move somewhere else. well I would do this. or I would do that. you're stupid for not trying harder." but it's funny...when the roles are reversed...when the shoe is on the other foot...how quick we are to bemoan our fates...to curse God and the universe and the jews and the poor and the rich and the Pat Robertsons of all our pain and misery. we blame others for our decisions, for the calamity that has befallen us. in the end the greatest calamity is that we have closed ourselves off from one another. that our voices mingle into a cacophony of bantering and bickering over who's right and who's wrong, who's to blame, who's side we're on, who made it happen, and who ruined everything. yet we never hear what we are saying. our words cloud the air, blind us, fence us off, seperate us. everyone talks but no one listens. everyone talks about what is good for the children and what should be done about the children, but no one listens to the children. everyone talks about the poor, and what should be done about the poor; but no one really listens to the poor. everyone argues over what God says and what God wants; but no one ever listens to God. so i sit and listen. listen to the miscommunications, the misunderstandings, the misgivings. listen to all the problems go unsolved. listen to everyone fall apart. listen to them talk in circles. all the while i wonder if they ever really listen to me? would they ever listen to me? does anything i have to say matter anyway? can anything i say repair all the bitterness and sorrow and lonliness and regret? would they even hear it in the first place? in all cases i don't think so. i think people, when they do listen, hear only what they want most of the time. they'll hear whatever makes them feel better about themselves or their predicament or their misfortune. it's not bad. we're only human. but it makes me less likely to talk to people about things that bother me. less likely to say what hurts me or what i find ironic or interesting or sad or happy. i don't think anyone wants to hear it really. plus i fear i may just end up repeating myself...or i may say something that's too close to the truth... not only that but i just feel like it's been said before. i'm not alone in what i think or feel or say. generations of mankind have passed before me, what makes anything i have to say so important? anyway, i was going somewhere with all of this but due to distractions and work lost my original train of thought. eh, no one is listening anyway...or maybe... i've stopped listening too? more later... 2:19 p.m. - 2005-08-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||