TheBanyanTree: A Life Lived Online

[Indiglow]

Listening, I sometimes think, is the most important thing.  Someone told me once that grief was a matter of unexpressed pain.  I thought back to pain I'd managed to survived, and recognized a need to express it.  But whether grief or joys, I think one of our most common human needs is to be heard.  People need to share their feelings, thoughts, awarenesses, questions, and know that they are heard.  I am a lousy group facilitator (I lead the adult "Not your Grandma's Sunday School) because it is so difficult for me to cut people off in order to stick to a time-line.  I recognize that no matter how much they are waffling, no matter how fumbling, these people need to be heard.  I'm told so often how meaningful and important this group is to the dozen or so that regularly attend, and know it is because they need to be listened to, to share their stories, hopes and joys and disappointments and hurts, and know that they are not completely alone.  One
 man tells me frequently how it amazes him what his wife shares in that group.  Married probably 50 years or more, grandchildren more than half grown, he tells me she is not one to easily open up and share her thoughts.  He's confided more than once that "this is not the woman he has known for so long."  And it delights him to be privy to what is going on in her mind.  Here in this group, there is an intimacy that allows her to do exactly that.  Sometimes her thoughts are simply amazing, or take my own thoughts in new ways I'd not considered.  "Mostly we just listen" is a grand, and not just good thing IMHO.
Jana
 

________________________________
 From: Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com>
To: Banyan Tree <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 10:17 AM
Subject: TheBanyanTree: A Life Lived Online
  

Not mine, of course, though it may seem like it.

I'm on this list. Not this list, another list. I've been on there for years
-- it's for people in my profession -- bookkeepers, accountants, CPA's,
EA's, etc. I've been on there for so long that after my surgery in the
distant past a group from the list sent me flowers. Some of us have met,
some of us are friends, some of us are friends but haven't met yet.

There's a guy on the list. There's always a guy. He shares everything
that's going on with his life, and many people find him insufferable not
from the sharing, but because he's often a key troublemaker when political
discussions go awry. There aren't supposed to be any political discussions,
but they pop up now and then. He's annoying enough with his pronouncements
that I've considered switching sides merely because I don't like being on
his side.

But that's a pretty weak excuse for switching my political persuasion, so I
haven't. But this guy . . . he was a history major in college, so he's
certain he knows everything and those who disagree with him are
fearmongerers (?) and not paying attention. And when it's pointed out to
him that he's often the problem, he doesn't get it, his level of
comprehension often being not as much as is required.

A couple of years ago he shared that he had a girlfriend, Shannon, and that
they were going to get married.

He kept us apprised of their march toward the altar. Many wished him well.

He keeps us notified of scifi marathons and classic radio shows. He talks
about how well done some tv shows are, like the Walking Dead (which I've
never seen, despite my love of zombies).

He told us of a car accident he was in where the other driver, who had
caused the accident, was killed. That shook him up.

He told us when he married Shannon.

Then Shannon got pregnant! While some of us may have thought, "poor kid,"
we congratulated him.

He talked of his wife often, and her pregnancy.

He emailed me once and asked if my book would offend his wife. She's a
psychiatric nurse and he thought I might be in the business of bashing
people in the industry. He's oblivious to what goes on around him in the
wider world. I told him I didn't know if it would offend her, or if she'd
like it, that I really couldn't tell him. So he didn't buy the book, and no
big deal to me. It was just a strange question, I thought.

Shannon got transferred to a remote location, as if West Virginia itself
weren't remote enough. Now they were moving to a remoter place.

He wrote about his struggle with his business, how he didn't know how to go
remote with his clients, and he kept asking the same marketing questions
year after year until some people threw up their hands in impatience.

The baby was born, and he often talked of taking care for her while he was
working.

The baby's not yet a year old.

And Shannon, a lifelong nonsmoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer, and they
couldn't fix it, they could only slow it down.

And this guy is faced with losing his wife and having a small baby who
won't remember much of her mother.

The other day she went to the hospital to have her lungs drained, and they
found more cancer they hadn't known about.

They're getting a second opinion.

Meanwhile, people send emails telling him they can beat it if they will
just think positively.

We're a stubborn people, us humans. That's probably a good thing, but if I
ever get cancer, which is likely with my family history, and people tell me
that I can just think it away, I'm likely to virtually smack them upside
the head.

I've never smacked anyone anywhere except in self-defense, so that's really
not likely. I'm more talk than bite.

I can't add to the chorus of "We're praying for you!" because I don't do
that, but I can hope her cancer goes into spontaneous remission and then
goes away by magic. I hope the same for another friend on the east coast
who also has a terminal lung cancer. And another friend's daughter on that
same list, who has been fighting cancer for six years. It just keeps
getting worse and they've removed much of her. She has three children, two
of them not much older than the cancer. They're all young, all these women.

We're no longer bound by geography, by a closeness in knowing people
face-to-face. We live in a world where Don's sadness can be shared with a
group of people all over the US and Canada, some of whom don't care for
him, but when someone's faced with the horrible things that happen in life
that doesn't matter so much. We're all of us united against the common
enemy. We hope for the best for those we know, even if they've annoyed us
in the past. We can transcend social constructs and meaningless barriers if
we just listen.

M