Practicing My Listening

When I tell people about how much I like audiobooks the most common response I get is some variation on the same theme: "I could never do that.  My mind wanders.  I have trouble paying attention.  I get too distracted.  They don't work for me."

It is an incredibly common response.  And it got me thinking--about oral traditions, storytelling, and the enumerable distractions in our modern lives--because I just love being read to and reading aloud.  I always have.  I guess a lot of people must outgrow it.  More specifically, I suspect most folks simply do not foster/practice this activity beyond the years of childhood.  Habits come, habits go...

Before the invention and widespread use of the printing press everyone was doing audiobooks--just the live, in-person, told by your elders type, rather than the digital.  Pretty much everything (from family history to cultural origin stories and mythologies) was passed down from mouth to ear to mouth again.  I've always thought that was impressive and interesting, since I am not well known for my sharp memory.  I can remember the idea dazzling me in my youth.  No books!  Just people with libraries of tales stored away in their brains!  How remarkable!

As I was pondering I came to the realization that maybe we all, as a generalization, suffer from an increasing inability to focus, to concentrate.  I know I certainly do, from time to time.  There are multitudes of distractions all about us, many of them quite flashy, dramatic, and appealing.  Television programs, apps, magazines, traffic, radio broadcasts, online games, office mates, housemates, phone calls, pets, family visits, texts, Facebook posts, newspapers, Instagram photos, car alarms, chores, Twitter updates, *gasp* blog entries!

There is so much going on around us almost all of the time.  I can easily see why people get distracted from their audiobooks.

And it happens to me.  Not daily, but a couple times per book, I'd say.  Sometimes I have to rewind my audiobooks.  There will be a passage which makes my brain start to wander down a different track--connecting dots in the plot lines, relating to characters, remembering other similar stories I've read, and other similar contemplations--and I realize I am no longer listening.  Or I realize that I am watching birds eat berries or planning a dinner party I am hosting soon and not really listening.  So, I just rewind and listen again.  No biggie.  Sometimes I have to rewind it a couple of times to get myself back on track if the competing train of thought is particularly strong.  Sometimes I pause the story and let my thought process run its course to the end and then I resume.  That works for me.

I didn't realize it until somewhat recently, but I feel that my interest in audiobooks is helping me cultivate a better ability to listen, in general.  I rewind less than I used to a couple years ago.  Plus, I can see benefits in my listening outside of the realm of books, in less-than-thrilling meetings, say, and in situations with lots of background noise or commotion.

I can tell when people are good listeners.  I can tell when people are just waiting for their chance to speak.  I know that I desire being more like the former than the latter.  To me, the ability to focus on something to the exclusion of just about all else, to really listen, is a very handy skill.  And not just for audiobooks.

(And in case anyone is curious:  The second most reason people give for not enjoying audiobooks to is that is makes them sleepy.  I suspect this is related to how many people are read to sleep as children.  I figure this is especially true when people are out of practice with reading, as this naptime/bedtime reading would be the muscle memory, for lack of a better term, which they'd fall back on.  Plus, reading is usually a relaxing, sedentary activity.  I still love to read in bed, to read myself to sleep.  Occasionally--if I am in the grip of an excellent tale--I even listen to an audiobook in bed and drift off to sleep on the wing of a story filtering into my ears, like when I was a girl, but with a modern twist.  Oh, how I wish Matt like to read out loud....)