Heard, Jeff

The importance of being heard should never be understated. So many of us walk around all day listening to music, podcasts, tv/movies playing in the background, the buzz of the fan, the rattle of the muffler, the hum of the electricity running through your phone as it's charging, the list goes on... its no wonder we don't HEAR as much as we should. Stop right now to listen to all the things you can hear, and then take a moment to think about what you're being told. Is your heart racing? Are you being told you had too much caffeine? Is the dog whimpering and telling you that it's time to go for a walk? Is your smoke detector beeping? Ok, if that's happening, stop reading and GO CHANGE IT! That's a safety issue that can't be postponed. For real.

I am very much a person who likes to have written directions or notes when I'm trying to do something that I've been told audibly because they help with clarification, managing expectations, and eases my own anxiety about messing something up. Not all things in life come with written directions, and I know I miss stuff when people tell me things over the phone, but it's also important to remember that what can be heard through text is sometimes real and sometimes is not real. Sometimes we put our own biases into the text we are reading.

As you're reading this, you're adding your own perception of my tone, inflection, and of how it's being written. Can you tell if I'm having a bad day? Can you tell how well I slept last night? Can you tell what I'm anxious about that maybe is ahead? I mean, if you follow my IG, you probably know all those details because I am constantly yapping about every little thing that I find amusing, but for the most part, no. Through audio we hear those tones and inflections that give insight to the fact that there is a real human with real emotions behind the thoughts. Even a rehearsed speech can slip off the rails and turn into a rant about something that shows someone's true emotional state.

When children want to be heard, they raise their voice, throw tantrums, and/or stomp up the stairs because that adds to their plea of being heard. "I'm upset! I disagree! I object!", doesn't have the same impact as you tip toe out of a room, now does it?

Throughout the election there was so much hope because many marginalized people felt like they were finally being heard. Their fears about the loss of women's rights and health care options were being heard and included in a national conversation. Their doubts about the fitness of yet another white, male President over the age of 70 were being heard. Their desire(s) for inclusion, climate change regulation, economic growth, an end to all of the hateful rhetoric that was being spewed, was being heard and repeated back to them by a media that seemed to be in agreement.

Now that our nation has spoken, and re-elected Trump, we can't stop talking about the things that gave us hope. We can't stop asking for change, a new generation of leadership, and an end to the deeply rooted hate that divides our country. However, we also HEARD all of those red votes. We've seen, heard, and felt what makes so much of our country cheer, and the rest of us are devastated. We thought, since everyone was listening, that we were also being heard. We didn't care that she was female, as much as the fact that she cared ABOUT women.

Mental health awareness, for people of a certain age, is a taboo that is not to be discussed. Boomers and Gen X'ers don't like to tell anyone they're in therapy because of the perceived stigma attached. (Assuming you can even convince them to try it.) "Crybaby therapy, going to see a shrink, talking to a quack about your problems" means you're crazy and don't have it all figured out. Americans need to be right, we need to be comfortable in our routine of control and power, we need to be in familiar environments because it gives us the best chances at coping using strategies that helped us "make it this far".

If our economy was that bad, maybe we should've cut back on some of the luxuries that were suddenly more expensive and supported legislation to help food production costs come back down. Maybe we could have cooked at home more often, bought lesser known brand names or prepared items that we would normally have bought pre-made? "No way, just make it cheap again, by any means necessary." At least, that's what we heard. (Listen, I get it, soda prices are insane... but we don't really NEED that soda anyway and you know it.) People who have experienced poverty, or had to "go without" in life, understand that sometimes you have to sacrifice for the benefit of others, since we are all in this together. The planet, the struggles of women/minorities, the cost of groceries, the uncertainty of foreign wars, affect us all- How we deal with it is what matters. Choosing to deal with our problems with violence, name-calling, anger, belittling entire races of people, and living under scaremongering threats is not what I wanted for our country.

When your spouse asks you to do something, do you hear that they are being lazy or do you hear that they need help? When your boss tells you to stay late to finish a project, do you hear the need to advance the business or do you hear that they are being controlling again? When the leader of the free world tells you he's going to close down the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., what do you hear? I hear that he believes by making education competitive instead of equitable, he is ensuring future generations of undereducated voters who can be manipulated and low-level employees that can be underpaid.

I suppose my point to today's post is that while we are all constantly listening to/hearing a world full of hurt, it is helpful for my mental health to sometimes reflect on what I'm actually hearing behind the noise. Only then, can I be reminded of what matters to me the most and utilize my value of trying to understand why/how/what is going on beneath the surface.

Thanks for reading; I hope you heard that I love our country, I mourn the loss of the election for so many reasons, and I'm hopeful we can all listen closely and truly hear each other as we go forward together.