Not really a hero's journey Part 1.
Meeting a friend after a long time can be exciting. However, it depends on multiple factors whether to be excited or not. First of all, I will start with what a friend means to me. The word “friend” may not hold the same meaning for everybody. For me, a friend is someone who listens. A friend can be my wife, son, mother, or anybody who listens. So, what does listening mean? Listening means giving all your attention to the person who is speaking and being less distracted. Most distractions come from the continuous voice on our minds all day long and continue to come as our so-called friend or loved one is speaking. The voice might take you to a past event or to your imagination.
For example, the person we are listening to is describing their dog. In an instant, a series of thoughts come to you, like the thought of a dog running behind you, then the thought of another dog chasing you, then the thought of a girl you liked before, then the same girl dating a different boy, and so on. This continues until your friend interrupts your thought cycle and asks you a question or solicits an opinion. Obviously, you cannot answer because you were not paying attention. To avoid awkwardness, you just give a vague answer or just smile. It is just like not being able to recall what your teacher taught in school. I rarely used to listen. I used to daydream all the time. That is why I failed many exams. The same thing is happening most of the time in our lives. So, truly listening is not pretending to listen, making smart faces, or saying ‘Yes, yeah’
Once, I had scheduled a meeting with a good old friend in a restaurant; we had been out of contact for quite some time but had recently reconnected. We did some catching up. We were excited to meet, but the excitement for me did not last long. Then he started talking about something that seemed quite important to him. I just shook my head while he was speaking, and sometimes I would just stare. From nowhere, he asked for my advice, and without giving it any thought, I said, ‘You should.” Obviously, I was not listening to whatever he was saying, and it did not even bother me. We ate whatever we ordered and left.
The next day, we met again, and he said that he did whatever he did as I had advised. I remembered that I had only said, “You should." That could have meant lots of things, like breaking up with his girlfriend, leaving the house, getting another job, etc. He looked happy, so I was happy that everything went smoothly after following my brief advice. I asked him, “So what exactly did you do?” As he started speaking, I became distracted by a female who had just passed in front of me. The voice inside my head started narrating. Beautiful girl. I wish I would take her on a date. She is hotter than my current girlfriend, and so on. As this monkey chatter was happening, I looked at my friend. He was still moving his lips. I smiled. “How can you smile after all this?” he said. It was just a courtesy smile that he did not realize. The poor fellow had no clue that I was lost again. His expression changed from happy to—I don’t know what. His lips stopped moving. There was a moment of silence between us. But the voice inside my head continued; in fact, to be honest, there was no silence; only the lips had stopped moving. I don’t know what happened next. Perhaps the voice inside his head had also started speaking. We did not speak to each other that evening until we went our separate ways. The voices inside our heads may have been enough. We left after that. He looked disappointed, which I noticed.
A few days later, I called him again. He did not care at first. He concluded that meeting with me again would be a waste of time. I would not add any value to the conversation. He would rather watch television. I was shocked to hear that. I seriously felt there was something wrong with him. I hung up the phone. As soon as I did that, I had an epiphany. I realized that I had not been listening to anything else but my thoughts all my life. It started to come back all at once. I had been so selfish all these years. And the most disappointing thing was that I would never know on which matter I had advised him earlier.
I decided to change myself in a way in which I became more selfless, loving, and caring. I was committed to doing whatever the opposite of not listening was. But I did not know how to start listening. I had no idea what listening was. It was a new thing for me. I have seen people do it. Just like swimming, some people know how to do it, but I did not. To swim, I first have to go near a swimming pool. Then I’ll have to put my legs in the water and finally go to the pool and go through training and hours of practice to be able to not drown. So much work just to swim, but at least I knew that theoretically. Similarly, listening was a new thing for me. I had to make a big shift toward listening, and I did not even know the theory behind it. It was quite difficult for me to completely change my paradigm. Nonetheless, I was determined to make that crucial change in my life. At that moment, I decided that I would start a hero’s journey. From darkness to light. From not listening to listening. From the previous chapter to another. I might tell you about the journey someday.