THE PLACE I GO TO LISTEN

Starbucks seems to be a place I go to, specifically to listen to people who aren’t listening to each other.

I don’t know whether I can blame social media. It seems too obvious. But the millennial over here and her social worker, are talking about interview skills. The social worker is cleverly teasing out the subtle nuances of interaction, and encouraging the teenager to let her actions speak for themselves. The teenager is loudly explaining how she’ll keep referring to how good she is at her job.

Tweet it out, create your insta-brand, don’t let anyone tell you you’re anything other than the you you want to be. It’s all a good message isn’t it? But there is something truly magical about listening to the heartbeat of another. Twitter is noisy.

Meanwhile, the ‘couple on the verge’ are silently not-listening at all. And ironically, I don’t think either knows what to say. He holds her hand across the table but she doesn’t know how she feels about it. He’s confused by the micro-quiver of her muscles wanting to retract, but she’s not pulling the hand completely away from him.

Old friends talk about their medical problems. One of them runs a finger across her teeth while the other uses hand gestures to emphasise a thing that happened. Each of them is thinking about what set of symptoms, or prognoses they have, to talk about next.

I’m not saying I’ve got listening sorted. What I’m doing, after all, is sitting here, on my own with a Christmas cup, eavesdropping. Yet were there someone here to chat to, would I be any more attentive than anyone else? Or would I be plotting out the moves of the conversation as though I were playing chess?

The social worker’s doing okay though. To the teenager’s great astonishment, she’s just told her that she (the younger lady) appears to find humblebragging very natural despite trying to talk herself down. It’s kind of obvious from over here. I’m hoping the older lady will follow it up with a comment on how all the millennial’s sentences seem to end with an upward intonation as though expressing some sort of insecurity about herself.

“They still keep in contact with me? As though I made a good impression? But I was only there for two weeks?”

Anyway, I guess listening must be a big part of the social worker’s job. Perhaps that skill should be more important in all our jobs? I’d certainly like to get better at it.

But I already come here too often.