“And the gym opens at 6am”
I think this might be the most redundant line ever uttered to me in the whole span of my life.
It’s funny what we reflect upon sometimes; how thoughts from nowhere pop into our minds, linger for a moment, and then they’re gone, perhaps forever.
Spending two days in London a week or so back, I stayed in an unfamiliar hotel, but the receptionist’s charming monologue had a familiar sound…
“Breakfast is served from 7am, and the gym opens…” she paused, caught her thoughts and then continued “…I’m afraid the gym is still closed.”
I smiled at her pause and reassured her that I was glad to be here, the lack of a gym would not be a disappointment to me. In doing so, I spared her my own well-rehearsed and terribly amusing lines that men of a certain age should neither exert themselves in shorts, nor drip their perspiration closer than one half-mile from another human being.
As I took my room key from her and found the lift to my room, I had a little thought about how many of my lines are so well trodden that their meaning is no longer visible to me. I trot them out like a tired comic’s old gags, but while they may sometimes raise a half-smile somewhere in the room, I wondered if they are relevant today, useful today or even wanted today?
At what point in our lives do we move from being people who predominantly listen, to people who predominantly broadcast?
I once used to sit on a worthy committee where one fellow member would regularly haul himself from his seat like a great sail being pulled up a mast, then clasping his thumbs to his lapels he would lean back, take an implausibly long breath, pause again and then drench us with his opinions – “My views on this subject are well known, but I suggest they stand repeating…”
I am not sure if you have seen a collective eye-roll before, but it is quite something to see a room full of bright, articulate and often sassy individuals paralysed by politeness, so that the only act of rebellion left open to them is to be determined not to listen.
I sometimes draw on things I remember from my childhood and as a quiet, rather nervous schoolboy I would rarely (never) be the person who thrust their hand skyward pleading for the teacher to pick them out. Even today, if I am in an audience and the presenter asks for a show of hands on something, I am ridiculously gripped by a slight panic not to put my hand up.
After one lesson the teacher asked me to stay behind for a minute. With the classroom empty, he asked me very gently why I never put my hand up. I said something to the effect that I didn’t think I had anything to say that would not be said by someone else, and said better than I would say it.
I don’t remember exactly what he said to me, but it was something like this:
“That’s fine, as long as you know that clever people are not always right, and those who do not think themselves clever will often be wise. Always listen Paul, always hear what has been said. Understanding is what happens after we have listened, not before it has been said”
He told me that it was ok not to put my hand up, as long as I was listening.
On that day one of my fears got left behind. I knew I had found a way to accept there was more for me to learn from listening than from being preoccupied with why I was not talking.
As I put my bag down on my bed in my unfamiliar hotel with the gym that would not be open at 6am, I was pleased that I had listened to the young receptionist and noted the pause in her unfamiliar lines. I was even more pleased I had not swamped such a delicate moment of understanding with my own lump of a well-worn broadcast-ready reply.
Take care. Paul x
