Listening? . . . Sigh.

Saturday is my Walk on the Beach day with a 47 year old man in The Program who is doing great and he's doing great without any help from me, to be honest about it, even though I greatly overinflate my importance in the world.  We were joined at the last minute by a 55 year old man who is doing pretty good.  I wouldn't call it great.  He's a dabbler in drug use.  I wouldn't do this personally but I'm no longer the arbiter of anyone else's behavior and it really sticks in my craw to say that because I do know how everyone else should live their lives.  

On a side note . . . I get the sense that the 55 year old guy looks at me as sort of an older brother while he views the 47 year old as a contemporary.  Age-wise he's right in the middle of the two of us.  I find this amusing.  I also see that he's treating his body as if he was a 30 year old and suffering some adverse consequences.  I tried to broach this with a kind perspective but I don't think he's going to change things up, probably until he suffers some even more severe adverse consequences.  This is also amusing - not amusing that he's going to suffer even more severe adverse consequences but that he's going to stonewall any perspective I might add and my perspective is fucking awesome.  This is also exactly how I used to respond when anyone suggested moderation in any of my behaviors.  I'm guessing he'll moderate only after he really messes up something in his body.

The walk consisted of a running conversation between the two of them, more of less.  My regular walking buddy mentioned this when we all parted.  I shrugged it off.  It was nice to listen to the back and forth of their talk, to hear the things that are of interest to them at this point in their lives, to see how they're relating to each other.  I find it amusing that when I hear two of my friends talk about social things that they're doing together - along with another collection of recovering people who also aren't that much younger than me but still view me as too old to be hip, even though I'm so fucking hip I can barely stand it - I can feel a little left out even though I wouldn't do any of the things they're talking about because I can't stay awake past nine o'clock and I don't like people and the things they do sound boring, frankly, so I guess what I'm saying is thank god I'm not being included.  Still a little pissed but grateful about it.

When I was still working as a salesguy I learned that silence could be a powerful tool in a sales call.  At first it was incredibly uncomfortable sitting with silence when I was supposed to be selling something but I found out that the silences were about a third as long as I perceived them to be and once I got used to them, practiced using them, they were far more uncomfortable to the engineer I was meeting with than they were to me.  I got to practice this listening technique repeatedly so I began to learn how to listen and I'm terrible at listening.  This was important because it was incredibly important to me to hear what they were thinking about, what their concerns and suspicions and biases were.  I could talk and talk and talk but if I wasn't dealing with what they wanted dealt with then I didn't usually get anywhere.  

So the listening part of the walk yesterday was just great.  It was great.  I can't help anyone, I can't be of service to anyone, if I don't know where their head is and I can't learn where their head is if I'm doing all the talking.  Don't misunderstand me - we all need to think out loud from time to time but the real joy in being alive is letting someone work something out while being a sounding board.  And with men it often takes a while for the problem to be revealed.  We're not great at telling someone else what is wrapping us around the axle.