All I ever wanted from anyone, was the respect of the value of my breath, my being. I have been nurtured and raised to believe. I have a gift. I was brought into this world with an intention to be used. I serve to respect myself and my society. In the tradition of my belief system, respect is a human right and every voice of the human race should be heard. All our ears need to learn to listen to each individual human voice with compassion and belief. The belief does not mean being in agreement with, but being in the state of acceptance, the belief in the value of another’s voice.
It seems to me, we are lost in the garden of voices with everyone screaming their name and the nature of their issue. It is like living in a garden of roses and lilies, carnations, all screaming at each other. It has become too loud to hear clearly any of the voices beyond the roar of the crowd. It is time to sort the notes, the ringing choruses of the voices so we can develop more respect for the sound, the verses of each individual voice. Each voice is a seed of the human garden. Just like nature has developed a pattern of respect for all living creations coming from seeds, we must learn a system of building a working system for allowing people to be nurtured as nature allows.
As a hair designer, I learned the act of listening. I learned the benefit of allowing another human being to be heard and valued. I gained the trust and the friendship of many people in my career of being a stylist by having a compassionate ear. I also learned to listen even when what I was listening to was not to my liking. I learned the act of acceptance without judgement.
Over the years, my ability to listen became problematic. There came a point I could not listen to story that did not have a pathway to solution. I thought I had no choice but to listen to my customers because they were paying me to listen. I realized I could not do my job while I was quietly angry. I slowly began to sabotage my client base by having emotional, angry outbursts while my clients were in the chair. So, I decided to quit my profession. I needed to express my voice and be creative and balanced. I personally felt I was not being heard and I was emotionally dying.
I changed my profession and started working in the grocery industry. Changing my environment from a female dominated to a male one, I experienced an eye-opening reality.
In my female dominated environment, I was used to having conversations, light and in depth, but generally connecting conversations. Within the male dominated environment of the grocery industry, there was less usage of intimate, connecting conversation. I experienced a huge sense of loss of intimacy.
The whole time I worked as a cashier, I was reprimanded for talking too much. My talking too much was me asking the questions and listening to the customer’s needs. I wanted to only validate their experience they had had while being in the store. The cashier is the last person to talk to before you leave the store. Because of my customer service skills of over forty years, I knew the importance of the last face to see and the last conversation of the transaction. They thought I was wasting company time by talking too much. I was asking questions and practicing my listening skills to create a sense of intimacy so the customer would feel connected and it was a last opportunity to gauge the quality of their visit.
In a corporate world, there seemed to be no time or tolerance for any deep human concerns nor did they want you to step outside of my “duties of a cashier.” They told me I was trying to “act like a manager.” I was just trying to be a compassionate, listening person of service. I did not understand listening skills were only used by managers.
I was simply trying to connect, communicate and give good service to the customer. I did not know my abilities to listen and communicate were going to be compartmentalized. I believe the separation from having holistic compassion, at all times, is the reason we are in trouble today as a nation. We have become corporations and we have lost our understanding of being human beings, working together in compassionate relationships.
I am thankful for my experience in the grocery industry because it taught me I needed the intimacy of relationships in order to have a happy and fulfilled life. I learned to create a balance of being intimate and efficient. It was a experience of unification of my female world of hair and grocery corporate male world. I found a place for my voice in a traditional male dominated world and I got to used my voice I learned coming from a female dominated world.
I learned to water the plants in both of my human gardens and I regained my lost voice by uniting the best qualities from both of my working worlds.
It proved to me, united we stand and divided, we will fall.
I want the well-watered, well-tended human garden. I want the experience of the fruits, the respect in the garden.
Photo/Pexels
Due to the nature of our society becoming more cutthroat in the last 37 years, people really have lost their compassion for each other.