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Picture a delightful town in wine growing country, with a quirky café and deli off the main tourist drag, mostly frequented by locals. The place smacks of relaxation, kindness, community and support. It draws you in.

You see, it was here one recent morning, whilst on holidays, that I became entranced by 2 local women, sitting close by, deep in conversation, having a heart to heart.

The woman facing me was deep in listening. I could tell by her demeanour that her friend was troubled.

What struck me was the listener’s steadfast concentration…or presence…call it what you will, her empathy, her apparent understanding and her compassion. I don’t doubt her troubled friend walked away a little lighter, a little more loved.

Her presence was captivating. It tore holes in my own listening canvas. My husband paid the price. Because in that moment, I was transported to an article I’d recently read in The Marginalian on the art of listening, by the famed social psychologist and philosopher, Erich Fromm.

Fromm frames listening as an art, like the understanding of poetry, because it’s alive, not as a technique, which he suggests is technical.

So let me share his six basic rules for mastering this art:

1. The basic rule for practising this art is the complete concentration of the listener.
2. Nothing of importance must be on his mind, he must be optimally free from anxiety as well as from greed.
3. He must possess a freely-working imagination which is sufficiently concrete to be expressed in words.
4. He must be endowed with a capacity for empathy with another person and strong enough to feel the experience of the other as if it were his own.
5. The condition for such empathy is a crucial facet of the capacity for love. To understand another means to love him — not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself.
6. Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed.

Without doubt, what I witnessed in the cafe that morning was poetry in motion and served as a reminder of how often we fall short of the listening mark, the art of unselfish understanding.

Moreover, it woke me up to how much better I can be.

Always learning, always inspired…

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