Having looked at some of the things that love is not, let us now examine some that love is. It was mentioned in the introduction to this section that the definition of love implied effort. When we extend ourselves, when we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. We do so in opposition to the inertia(惯性) of laziness or the resistance of fear. Extension of ourselves or moving out against the inertia of laziness we call work. Moving out(开始行动) in the face of fear we call courage. Love, then, is a form of work or a form of courage. Specifically, it is work or courage directed toward the nurture of our own or another’s spiritual growth. We may work or exert(施加影响) courage in directions other than toward spiritual growth, and for this reason all work and all courage is not love. But since it requires the extension of ourselves, love is always either work or courage. If an act is not one of work or courage, then it is not an act of love. There are no exceptions.
The principal form that the work of love takes is attention. When we love another we give him or her our attention; we attend to that’s person’s growth. When we love ourselves we attend to our own growth. When we attend to someone we are caring for that person. The act of attending requires that we make the effort to set aside our existing preoccupations(当务之急)(as was described in regard to the discipline of bracketing) and actively shift our consciousness. Attention is an act of will, of work against the inertia of our own minds. As Rollo May says, “When we analyze will with all the tools modern psychoanalysis brings us, we shall find ourselves pushed back to the level of attention or intention as the seat of will. The effort which goes into the exercise of the will is really effort of attention; the strain(焦虑) in willing is the effort to keep the consciousness clear, i.e., the strain of keeping the attention focused.”
By far the most common and important way in which we can exercise our attention is by listening. We spend an enormous amount of time listening, most of which we waste, because on the whole(就全体而论) most of us listen very poorly. An industrial psychologist once pointed out to me that the amount of time we devote to teaching certain subjects to our children in school is inversely(相反地) proportional(成比例的) to the frequency with which the children will make use of the subject when they grow up. Thus a business executive will spend roughly(粗略地) an hour of his day reading, two hours talking and eight hours listening. Yet in school we spend a large amount of time teaching them how to speak, and usually no time at all teaching them how to listen. I do not believe it would be a good thing to make what we teach in school exactly proportional to what we do after school, but I do think we would be wise to give our children some instruction in the process of listening-not so that(为使) listening can be made easy but rather that(而是) they will understand how difficult it is to listen well. Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.
Not very long ago I attended a lecture(讲座) by a famous man on an aspect of the relationship between psychology and religion in which I have long been interested. Because of my interest I had a certain amount of expertise(专门知识) in the subject and immediately recognized the lecturer to be a great sage(智者) indeed. I also sensed love in the tremendous effort that he was exerting to communicate, with all manner of examples, highly abstract concepts that were difficult for us, his audience, to comprehend. I therefore listened to him with all the intentness of which I was capable. Throughout the hour and a half he talked sweat was literally(简直) dripping(滴下) down my face in the air-conditioned auditorium(礼堂). By the time he was finished I had a throbbing(悸动的) headache, the muscles in my neck were rigid from my effort at concentration, and I felt completely drained(精疲力尽) and exhausted. Although I estimated that I had understood no more than 50 percent of what this great man had said to us that afternoon, I was amazed by the large number of brilliant insights he had given me. Following the lecture, which was well attended by culture-seeking individuals, I wandered about through the audience during a coffee break listening to their comments. Generally they were disappointed. Knowing his reputation, they had expected more. They found him hard to follow and his talk confusing. He was not as competent a speaker as they had hoped to here. One woman proclaimed(宣告) to nods of agreement, “He really didn’t tell us anything.”
In contradistinction(对比的区别) to the others, I was able to hear much of what this great man said, precisely because I was willing to do the work of listening to him. I was willing to do this work for two reasons: one, because I recognized his greatness and that what he had to say would likely be of great value; second, because of my interest in the field I deeply wanted to absorb what he had to say so as to enhance my own understanding and spiritual growth. My listening to him was an act of love. I loved him because I perceived him to be a person of great value worth attending to, and I loved myself because I was willing to work on behalf of my growth. Since he was the teacher and I the pupil, he the giver and I the receiver, my love was primarily self-directed, motivated by what I could get out of our relationship and not what I could give him. Nonetheless, it is entirely possible that he could sense within his audience the intensity of my concentration, my attention, my love, and he may have been thereby rewarded. Love, as we shall see again and again, is invariably a two-way street, a reciprocal(相互的) phenomenon whereby the receiver also gives and the giver also receives.
From this example of listening in the receiver role let us proceed to our most common opportunity to listen in the giver role: listening to children. The process of listening to children differs depending upon the age of the child. For the present let us consider a six-year-old first-grader. Given the chance, a first-grader will talk almost incessantly(不间断地). How can parents deal with this never-ending chatter?
Perhaps the easiest way is to forbid it. Believe it or not, there are families in which the children are virtually(事实上) not allowed to talk, in which the dictum(格言) “Children should be seen and not heard” applies twenty-four hours a day. Such children may be seen, never interacting, silently staring at adults from the corners, mute onlookers(旁观者) from she shadows.
A second way is to permit the chatter but simply not listen to it, so that your child is not interacting with you but is literally talking to thin air(子虚乌有) or to him-or herself, creating background noise that may or may not be annoying.
A third way is to pretend to listen, proceeding along as best your can with what you are doing or with your train of thought while appearing to give the child your attention and occasionally making “unh huh” or “that’s nice” noises at more or less appropriate times in response to the monologue(长篇独白).
A fourth way is selective listening, which is a particularly alert(机敏的) from of pretend listening, wherein(在其中) parents may prick up(竖起) their ears if the child seems to be saying something of significance, hoping to separate the wheat from the chaff(谷壳，无价值的东西) with a minimum of effort. The problem with this way is that the human mind’s capacity to filter selectively is not terribly competent(能胜任的) or efficient, with the result that a fair amount of chaff is retained and a great deal of the wheat(小麦) lost.
The fifth and final way, of course, is to truly listen to the child, giving him or her your full and complete attention, weighing(认真考虑) each word and understanding each sentence.
These five ways of responding to the talking of children have been represented in ascending order of effort, with the fifth way, true listening, requiring from the parent a quantum(定额) leap(跳高) of energy compared to the less effortful ways. The reader may naively(天真地) suppose that I will recommend to parents that they should always follow the fifth way and always truly listen to their children. Hardly!
First of all, the six-year-old’s propensity(倾向) to talk is so great that a parent who always truly listened would have negligible(不值一提的) time left to accomplish anything else.
Second, the effort required to truly listen is so great that the parent would be too exhausted to accomplish anything else.
Finally, it would be unbelievably boring, because the fact of the matter is that the chatter of a six-year-old is generally boring.
What is required, therefore, is a balance of all five ways. It is necessary at times to tell children simply to shut up-when, for instance, their talk may be distracting(分散注意力) in situations that critically require attention elsewhere or when it may represent a rude interruption of others and an attempt to achieve hostile(怀敌意的) or unrealistic(不切实际的) dominance. Frequently six-year-olds will chatter for the pure joy of chattering, and there is nothing to be served by giving them attention when they are not even requesting it and are quite clearly happy talking to themselves. There are other times when children are not content(满足的) to talk to themselves but desire to interact with parents, and yet their need can be quite adequately met by pretend listening. At these times what children want from interaction is not communication but simply closeness, and pretend listening will suffice(足够) to provide them with sense of “being with” that they want. Furthermore, children themselves often like to drift in and out of communication and will be understanding of their parents’ selective listening, since they are selectively communicating. They understand this to be the rule of the game. So it is only during a relatively small proportion(部分) of their total talking time that six-year-old children need or even desire a response of true and total listening. One of the many extremely complex tasks of parenting is to be able to strike(达到平衡) a close to ideal balance of styles of listening and not listening, responding with the appropriate style to a child’s varying needs.
Such a balance is frequently not struck because, even though the duration need not be long, many parents are unwilling or unable to expend the energy required for true listening. Perhaps most parents. They may think they are truly listening when all they are doing is pretend listening, or at best(最多) selective listening, but this is self-deception, designed to hide from themselves their laziness. For true listening, no matter how brief, requires tremendous effort.
First of all, it requires total concentration. You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time. If a parent wants to truly listen to a child, the parent must put aside everything else. The time of true listening must be devoted solely(单独地) to the child; it must be the child’s time. If you are not willing to put aside everything, including your own worries and preoccupations(当务之急) for such a time, then you are not willing to truly listen.
Second, the effort required for total concentration on the words of a six-year-old child is considerably(相当多地) greater than that required for listening to a great lecturer. The child’s speech patterns are uneven(不规则的)-occasional rushes of words interspersed(散置的) with pauses and repetitions-which makes concentration difficult. Then the child will usually be talking of matters that have no inherent interest for the adult, whereas the great lecturer’s audience is specifically interested in the topic of his speech. In other words, it is dull(枯燥无聊的) to listen to a six-year-old, which makes it doubly difficult to keep concentration focused. Consequently truly listening to a child of this age is a real labor of love. Without love to motivate the parent it couldn’t be done.
But why bother? Why exert all this effort to focus totally on the boring prattlings(小孩般说话) of a six-year-old?
First, your willingness to do so is the best possible concrete evidence of your esteem(尊重) you can give your child. If you give your child the same esteem you would give a great lecturer, then the child will know him-or herself to be valued and therefore will feel valuable. There is no better and ultimately no other way to teach your children that they are valuable people than by valuing them.
Second, the more children feel valuable, the more they will begin to say things of value. They will rise to your expectation of them.
Third, the more you listen to your child, the more you will realize that in amongst(在……当中) the pauses, the stutterings(口吃), the seemingly innocent(幼稚的) chatter, your child does indeed have valuable things to say. The dictum that great wisdom comes from “the mouths of babes” is recognized as an absolute fact by anyone who truly listens to children. Listen to your child enough and you will come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be, the more you will be willing to listen. And the more your will learn.
Fourth, the more you know about your child, the more you will be able to teach. Know little about your children, and usually you will be teaching things that either they are not ready to learn or they already know and perhaps understand better than you.
Finally, the more children know that you value them, that you consider them extraordinary people, the more willing they will be to listen to you and afford you the same esteem(尊重). And the more appropriate your teaching, based on your knowledge of them, the more eager your children will be to learn from you. And the more they learn, the more extraordinary they will become.
If the reader senses the cyclical(循环的) character of this process, he or she is quite correct and is appreciating the truth of the reciprocity(互惠) of love. Instead of a vicious(恶劣的) downward cycle, it is a creative upward cycle of evolution and growth. Value creates value. Love begets(产生) love. Parents and child together spin forward faster and faster in the pas de deux(芭蕾双人舞) of love.
We have been talking with a six-year-old in mind. With younger or older children the proper balance of listening and nonlistening differs, but the process is basically the same. With younger children the communication is more and more nonverbal but still ideally requires periods of total concentration. You can’t play patty-cake(儿童拍手游戏) very well when your mind is elsewhere. And if you can only play patty-cake halfheartedly, you are running the risk of having a halfhearted child. Adolescent children requires less total listening time from their parents than a six-year-old but even more true listening time. They are much less likely to chatter aimlessly, but when they do talk, they want their parents’ full attention even more than do the younger children.
The need for one’s parents to listen is never outgrown(过大的). A thirty-year-old talented professional man in treatment for feelings of anxiety related to low self-esteem could recall numerous instances in which his parents, also professionals, had been unwilling to listen to what he had to say or had regarded(认为) what he had to say as being of little worth and consequence. But of all these memories the most vivid and painful was that of his twenty-second year, when he wrote a lengthy(漫长的) provocative(启发性的) thesis that earned his graduation from college with high honors. Being ambitious for him, his parents were absolutely delighted by the honors he had received. Yet despite the fact that for a whole year he left a copy of the thesis around in full view in the family living room and made frequent hints to his parents that “they might like to have a look at it,” neither one of them ever took the time to read it. “I daresay they would have read it,” he said toward the end of his therapy, “I daresay they would have even complimented(补全) me on it had I gone to them and asked them point-blank(直截了当的), ‘Look, would you please, please read my thesis? I want you to know and appreciate the kinds of things I am thinking.’ But that would have been begging them to listen to me, and I was damned(糟透的) if at twenty-two I was going to go around begging for their attention. Having to beg for it wouldn’t have made me feel any more valuable.”
True listening, total concentration on the other, is always a manifestation of love. An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one’s own prejudices(偏见), frames of reference(观点) and desire so as to experience as far as possible the speaker’s world from the inside, stepping inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually an extension and enlargement of ourself, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable(脆弱的) and more and more inclined(对……有兴趣的) to open up the inner recesses(深处) of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet(二重奏) dance of love is again begun. The energy required for the discipline of bracketing and the focusing of total attention is so great that it can be accomplished only by love, by the will to extend oneself for mutual(共同的) growth. Most of the time we lack this energy. Even though we may feel in our business dealings or social relationships that we are listening very hard, what we are usually doing is listening selectively, with a preset(预先装置的) agenda(议事日程) in mind, wondering as we listen how we can achieve certain desired results and get the conversation over with as quickly as possible or redirected in ways more satisfactory to us.
Since true listening is love in action, nowhere is it more appropriate than in marriage. Yet most couples never truly listen to each other. Consequently, when couples come to us for counseling(咨询) or therapy, a major task we must accomplish if the process is to be successful is to teach them how to listen. Not infrequently we fail, the energy and discipline involved begin more than they are willing to expend or submit themselves to. Couples are often surprised, even horrified(恐惧的), when we suggest to them that among the things they should do is talk to each other by appointment. It seems rigid and unromantic and unspontaneous to them. Yet true listening can occur only when time is set aside for it and conditions are supportive of it. It cannot occur when people are driving, or cooking or tired and anxious(渴望的) to sleep or easily interrupted or in a hurry. Romantic “love” is effortless, and couples are frequently reluctant(不情愿的) to shoulder(承担) the effort and discipline of true love and listening. But when and if they finally do, the results are superbly(极好地) gratifying. Again and again we have the experience of hearing one spouse say to another with real joy, once the process of true listening has been started, “We’ve been married twenty-nine years and I never knew that about you before.” When this occurs we know that growth in the marriage has begun.
While it is true that one’s capacity to truly listen may improve gradually with practice, it never becomes an effortless process. Perhaps the primary requisite(必要条) for a good psychiatrist is a capacity to truly listen, yet half a dozen times during the average “fifty-minute hour” I will catch myself failing to truly listen to what my patient is saying. Sometimes I may lose the thread of my patient’s associations entirely, and it is then necessary for me to say, “I’m sorry, but I allowed my mind to wander for a moment and I was not truly listening to you. Could you run over the past few sentences again?” Interestingly, patients are usually not resentful when this occurs. To the contrary, they seem to understand intuitively(直觉地) that a vital(至关重要的) element of the capacity to truly listen is being on the alert(警惕) for those lapses(过失) when one is not truly listening, and my acknowledgment that my attention has wandered actually reassures them that most of the time I am truly listening. This knowledge that one is being truly listened to is frequently in and of itself remarkably( 明显地) therapeutic(有疗效的). In approximately a quarter of our cases, whether patients are adults or children, considerable(相当大的) and even dramatic improvement is shown during the first few months of psychotherapy, before any of the roots of problems have been uncovered or significant interpretations(解释) have been made. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but chief among them, I believe, is the patient’s sense that he or she is being truly listened to, often for the first time in years, and perhaps for the first time ever.
While listening is by far the most important form of attention, other forms are also necessary in most loving relationships, particularly with children. The variety of such possible forms is great. One is game-playing. With the infant this will be patty-cake and peekaboo; with the six-year-old it will be magic tricks, go fish, or hide-and-seek; with the twelve-year-old it will be badminton and gin rummy(一种两人玩的纸牌游戏); and so on. Reading to young children is attention, as is helping older ones with their homework. Family activities are important: movies, picnics(野餐), drives, trips, fairs, carnivals(嘉年华). Some forms of attention are pure service to the child: sitting on the beach attending a four-year-old or the almost endless chauffeuring(开车运送) required by early adolescents. But what all these forms of attention have in common-and they have it in common with listening as well-is that they involve time spent with the child. Basically, to attend is to spend time with, and the quality of the attention is proportional to the intensity of concentration during that time. The time spent with children in these activities, if used well, gives parents countless opportunities to observe their children and come to know them better. Whether children are good losers or bad, how they do their homework and how they learn, what appeals to them and what doesn’t, when they are courageous(勇敢的) and when they are frightened in such activities-all are vital pieces of information for the loving parent. This time with the child in activity also gives the parents innumerable opportunities for the teaching of skills and the basic principles of discipline. The usefulness of activity for observing and teaching the child is of course the basic principle of play therapy, and experienced child therapists may become extremely adept(熟练的) at using the time spent with their child patients in play for making significant observations and therapeutic interventions(干预).
Keeping one’s eye on a four-year-old at the beach, concentrating on an interminable(无止尽的) disjointed(脱节的) story told by a six-year-old, teaching an adolescent how to drive, truly listening to the tale of your spouse’s day at the office or laundromat(自助洗衣店), and understanding his or her problems from the inside, attempting to be as consistently(一贯地) patient and bracketing as much as possible-all these are tasks that are often boring, frequently inconvenient and always energy-draining(耗费精力的); they mean work. If we were lazier we would not do them at all. If we were less lazy we would do them more often or better. The subject of laziness is an extremely important one. It is a hidden theme running throughout the first section on discipline and this one on love. We will focus it specifically in the final section, when we should have a clearer perspective.
Bracketing is balancing the need for stability and the assertion of the self with the need for new knowledge and greater understanding by temporarily giving up oneself, putting oneself aside, so as to make room for the incorporation of new material into the self.
Work means physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something