The Year of Listening

2023 was a wild year. I got laid off, lost a bunch of friends, made a bunch of new ones, and set out to become a better listener. It was the best year yet.

The Year of Listening doesn't happen without 2022's The Year of Kindness. I had benefited so much from who I'd become exploring that topic for a year. As 2022 wrapped up I wanted to keep going. I wanted to accelerate my growth. I spent some time at the end of last year exploring what would be the hardest journey I could take on. I wanted something that would stretch me further; I wanted something harder.

I first considered what it would take to live in a year of silence. (!!!)

Cooler heads prevailed. I decided the heart of silence is learning how to listen, so that became my intention for the year.

Late in 2022, I heard a podcast where the guest mentioned the Chinese character for 'to listen' includes elements from the characters of 'ear', 'body', and 'number one'.

This gave me a starting point entering the year. I'd seek to listen with not only my ears, but also my body, and my attention. Something I learned very quickly was how much energy it takes to really listen. No zoning out, no daydreaming.

Often, this felt like a chore. It's hard for me to maintain attention and focus. I find it difficult to sustain my focus for long periods. I eventually discovered a mechanism to help. I found if I was interested in what / who I was listening to, my focus and attention followed naturally. My attention turned from listening harder to finding what was interesting and paying attention to that.

I'm surprised how becoming a better listener soon became more about What I was listening to than Who. I spent a bunch of time this year listening to the weather. I listened to rainfall over the winter. I listened so much I started to be able to discern between size and rate of raindrops. (Listening to rain is amazing. Highly recommended.)

I spent several nights out on my deck, listening to the wind. There's something incredibly thrilling about being outdoors during crazy winds. Where I live, howling winds often fell trees. There's this added sense of danger, a thrill in the listening. The first thing I noticed was the rhythms of wind. Wind comes in gusts, unpredictably so. Even after ten or twenty minutes of listening, I couldn't predict the next gust. But there's also a certainty about wind. Eventually, it gusts again. Eventually, I found the joy in giving myself over to it, to let it lash my face and whip my hair. In the moment, this felt exciting and mysterious, like finding harmony in moments of chaos.

After a few nights of this, I started to pay more attention to cycles. For awhile now, my wife has helped our family find wonderful traditions around the moon cycles. Every full moon, we'll be out on our deck before bedtime with a jar of moon water with appropriate crystals, howling at the moon.

Soon, I noticed that I'd started unconsciously paying attention to little rhythms in our family life. This became a fun little game, to figure out how and where to plug in. Where I needed to lead, when it was best to hang back, when I could participate, or when I wasn't needed. Going with the flow, plugging into the stream; it's an efficient way of living. I think I was able to conserve some energy this year the better I got at listening.

I probably paid a little too much attention to these family rhythms. One funny situation I found myself in came as I was deeply focused on observing when the best time to get the puppy out on a walk, or clean the chicken coop, or harvest honey, or wash the car. Somewhere in the midst of these routines, I hadn't found a convenient time for a shower. It had been a few weeks without showering simply because an ideal time hadn't presented itself. I learned to pair logic and responsibility with exploring these little rhythms.

Something that stood out to me was rhythms with friends and colleagues. Little routines we found ourselves in. I have a couple of relationships that are mostly about play. We surf together, we drink together. I have more relationships that bend towards the serious; every time we're together, we dive deep. Some of these relationships blend these forms, and this year I got better at allowing relationships to be flowing and natural. I hadn't realized it but somewhere along the way I'd gotten pretty stratified in how I viewed friends and colleagues. 'Eric is my buddy. We go fishing together.' 'Johan is my work buddy. We like the same books.' 'Zach is the dude who always answers a text.'

This year I started to understand life's a little more fun when I don't know what to expect. These friendships / work colleagues / etc were way more fun to roll with as they unfolded vs sorting through what it means if Zach doesn't answer a text.

This year I saw some friends less frequently, messaged some more often, went and had 1:1 time with a few dudes I didn't really know all so well. I'm glad I did - each time was fun and easy and has led to other cool hangs.

Somewhere along this year I started to notice how these rhythms and patterns sometimes don't make sense. These rhythms most often get disrupted by us. People. The rest of the natural world tends to largely settle into a state of order. They don't value disruption. They don't need to advance, only to evolve. To survive.

Wolves don't have safety, we do. Yet a wolf spends zero energy worrying about how it looks or why it exists. Looking more ancient - trees. Trees don't fight over resources - they participate and cooperate with their neighbors. This is a natural rhythm, around for centuries.

So I started to wonder if this was the Unnatural State. Us, humans, blessed with intelligence and logic and cursed with the damning side effects. It's happenstance we're even here in the first place. I heard imagery from Tim Urban this year: in a thousand-page book, if each page were to represent a period of time from the beginning of life as we can trace it, basically from the time we harnessed electricity until AI started threatening to take over our existence, all of this modern age is collapsed together on the final half-page.

That's modern people. For the tens of thousands of years from when man came down from the trees, how many lucky roles of the dice and particular evolutionary zigs and zags led to us? We are free to learn and invent and dream and rather than doing these wonderful things, we largely spend this gift of life worrying about it being taken away.

And that's just us modern people. When lumped in with all the human race, we go all the way back to page 975. So much life happened before we ever got here.

And that's just our galaxy. We don't understand much about the expanses beyond ours but we understand it's more likely that they contain galaxies of life in some entirely different comprehension as where we've ended up. And we have no idea how much time passed before our understanding in this galaxy, but we understand time is the magic elixir for life to grow and evolve. Lately I've been thinking it might be worth assuming whatever or whoever is out there is more evolved than we are.

Here's a possibility. Let's assume one of these galaxies beyond our measurement has been around longer than we have, and their life forms are more evolved than ours. Just consider how they communicate. Do they need language? Are they more like bats (sonar) or dolphins (echolocation) or sharks (smell) or trees (electrochemical)? The list could kind of go on forever - I'm mainly stuck on the thought that every other living thing throughout our understanding of life communicates, freely with the world. We're in a sense the most evolved creatures in this galaxy, a responsibility we assumed sometime around when we acquired the power to destroy other life forms, but we're the only ones who struggle to communicate. To understand each other, or even want to.

A wolf pisses and sniffs and circles and bares fangs or averts a gaze in natural rituals. They communicate, constantly, with their surroundings. Maybe we're the unnatural ones here.

Beyond communication, we are unnatural to the world around us. Every other living thing lives in harmony with its environment. We generally understand we, too, should do this but it's a rare few who do. We spend our existence struggling to play false games we hate - we're the only form of life that disrespects life by wasting it.

I mean this as an entirely hopeful thing. If it's true - if all the time before our existence and the (maybe endless?) time after is the more natural state, this life might be the unnatural state - I believe that frees us from the fear of death. If after we pass from this form in this moment to that which is our more natural state, then that's potentially great news. It means we tune back into a natural harmony with the world and stop struggling and worrying and wasting; we become one with the universe and its plans for us. We don't have to fear.

What then would we do with this time in this rare form, given this unique opportunity to sense and taste and hear all of the life around us at this moment? What would shift inside us if we understood that after we pass, we return to where we've already been and so we don't need to be afraid of dying? Would we take more time to savor it? To take a chance and communicate with it, open ourselves up to what it wants from us? What would that look like?

Would we stare up at the stars more often, in wonder at it all? What would be worth our time while we're here?

Old man soccer

I started playing soccer again this year. In the blessing of all blessings, some dad / coach friends invited me to a regular Thursday night game just as Spring was wrapping up. My first question to them was whether this was a chill, friendly kickaround, or a competition. They assured me it was the former. (*Narrator's voice: It was not chill*.)

Despite what was described to me, I showed up a little nervous and a bit weary. I was maybe right to be. The first kick around I joined was a full-out war. Dudes were flying around, the ball was pinging around; I could hear the dull thuds and grunts as they were clashing into each other. Everything felt like a blur. And that was just the old dudes. Then these two goddamn Sycamores of human beings show up, teenage sons of one of the dads (Seth, himself quite a player) who were in phenomenal shape. I swear they were 6'5" and could have played in the NFL. They put me on my ass more than once, and somehow the game sped up once they joined.

It was WONDERFUL.

I was vibrating with adrenaline for hours after. I realized I just don't have this in my life, a forum where I could compete, experience some physical contact. To challenge myself to see if I still had it.

In my younger days, soccer had consumed me. I stood out in youth soccer, played on an international stage in my teenage years, and made it all the way to D1 soccer where I thrived before getting cut my senior year. I have a complicated relationship with the game. I hadn't really played in about 20 years; I just started to get back into the game the past year when my kids asked me to coach their teams in city league.

Part of finding this Old Man game helped me reconnect with a real source of joy from my youth. I loved playing soccer. I was happy to find out I still do. I love the flow of the game, the rhythm of it. I was surprised how quickly old instincts came back to me, how I could sense when and where pressure was coming from, where my teammates would be.

Now that I'm older, I can see how much the game formed who I've become. As a player, I thrived in setting up my teammates. For 20+ years, I've been in the workforce and faced skepticism, confusion, and in some cases, outright hostility for how I collaborate and seek to give credit to others before myself. It wasn't until this year, getting back into playing, where this all started to make sense to me. On the field, I'd been lauded for my unselfishness. It wasn't until I got into the corporate workforce where I started to hear how naive I was for the same unselfishness.

Getting back into the game, reconnecting with all the wonderful life lessons that come from a sport I care deeply about, it's helped me understand I should probably tune out some advice I'd been receiving. I've never been someone who looks out for number one; I didn't see the sense in starting now.

Shutting up and listening

This year, 2023, I spent a ton of time alone. I worked to invent things to pull on my time. I had space and an assumed intention of wanting to become a better listener. I wasn't making much headway, and I knew it.

I realize looking back, progress felt (and feels) incredibly slow. As with these little journeys I've been going on lately, growth came in all sorts of unexpected ways, most of them not what I was expecting to find.

This year Spotify started invading my playlists with additional recommendations. Pardon me for a second: I mean, what the fuck? This fucking algorithm inserting songs into my bloody playlist? Ignore that this was given as an opt-out feature, that's an embarrassment. The gall to believe their engineering belonged in the same class as my taste in music! I was outraged for days.

This ties back to listening. Part of listening for me is about working past my first instinct reaction. It goes like this - I start listening or paying attention to something. I form an idea in my head of what this thing is or means, and I start bringing my attention to what I do with this understanding. If and when I can work to quiet this line of thinking, I can bring my attention back and learn something. (This year I got better at recognizing this pattern, and focusing on what I was curious or interested in, which tends to bring me back to listening.)

This helped me get better at waiting before I did anything. As I waited out my knee-jerk reaction to Spotify welcoming itself into something as incredibly personal as the soundtrack to my life, I started to wonder. Was I having this negative reaction because I'm worried I'll be right, that these soulless ghouls in our computers could never meaningfully contribute to a personal playlist, or am I having this reaction because I'm worried it will?

I went from wondering whether I should cancel Spotify to curious and willing to investigate this AI-induced arrogance.

And those wily fuckers. They did it. I'm someone who OBSESSES over music. I curate seasonal playlists - these play in the morning as we're making breakfast, whenever we're in the car going to soccer practice or swimming or piano. I work to these playlists. My boy falls asleep to these songs.

And Spotify recommendations actually added value to a few of these very personal playlists. I heard artists that pulled me towards classical, back to chamber pop, even revisited Explosions in the Sky. They did it; I give in. Go ahead and join (uninvited!) my private playlists, add songs you believe I'll like. Let's ride, you fuckers.

Sometimes listening started with letting go of expectations.

Notes for the end

I've been listening to everything I can get my hands on from rockstar particle physicist Brian Cox this year. When I listen to him speak, I tend to reflect on the incredible lightness of even being here.

He speaks often about the vastness of the universe, how we know of trillions of stars and millions of potential habitable planets (roughly the same distance and relationship to their central star or sun), which begs the question why we haven't been contacted by other forms of life. Out of these millions of potential habitable planets, why hasn't someone or something reached out to connect with us, a fellow form of life? The view I like to take is maybe life itself is a miracle. Maybe life is capable of forming on some of those other possibly hospitable planets but it hasn't yet sustained long enough to evolve, to develop thought, and consciousness. Maybe it's a miracle we get to experience this stuff at all.

(Something that has been blowing my mind recently: so I think we all can generally comprehend our solar system is a bunch of planets revolving around our central star, which we call our sun. It hurts my brain to wrap my brain around that sun hurtling through space and time, orbiting the center of the galaxy, with us pulled along with it. Then of course the Milky Way as a galaxy is hurtling through space, the rate of which we have difficulty measuring because we need to measure relative to the other galaxies, which are themselves moving at an unknown rate. It begs the question: where are we all going? And for me, additionally: why? I start to grapple with Mr. Cox's perspective that it's kind of incredible we ended up on this particular rock hurtling through space, the exact distance it needs to maintain to extract energy from the sun but not burn or freeze being too close or too far, and that this particular planet earth happens to be spinning at a rate that perfectly maintains this orbit, and provides the perfect amount of gravitational force so we don't fall off the planet and ourselves hurtle through space, but not so much force that we cannot jump, or fly. Maybe this is a miracle.)

Apropos of this, I spend a lot of time considering death. We're all going to die. This is all going to end. It's maybe the one truth that won't change. When I was younger, I used to be terrified of death. Lately, that's no longer the case. Over time I've found I'd rather try and live a life worthy of the miracle of my very existence than live in fear of its end. And today, without knowing how much time I have left, or any understanding of the purpose of my existence, the only approach that has made any sense to me is just to guess at what a worthy life looks like.

I've lucked into a remarkable family. I can't imagine ever regretting spending as much time with them as possible. Paying as close attention as possible to this fleeting and wonderful moment I find myself in as a dad to a nine-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy. Something that's been working in really interesting ways is to use Voice Memos on my phone.

I've been recording these little notes when I'm with the kids. We can be having a conversation, or listening to music together, or eating popcorn - usually I think to do this when we're hanging out and the energy is high. (I get their consent and have no intention of ever sharing these.) I can imagine a future where they're grown up and have their own families and lives, and I'm maybe more of an obligation than a best friend - in that distant future, I imagine I'll wish I had as many of these recordings as possible, just to remember what their little voices sounded like, or what was running through their heads in this magical childhood we're trying to give them.

Having the comfort of these little recordings takes the pressure off for me to try and pack more memories in. I like to believe this frees me up to lock in other experiences. How small but strong he feels in my arms. How he notices very interesting, almost imperceivable details about things; he's always paying attention. When we laughed ourselves silly or what his voice sounded like and how his r's sound like 'ours'.

So I've designed these little memory capsules to listen to in the future, but I've also noticed a powerful effect on the present. I know I'm planning to listen to these, and assuming I'll cherish them. So I've also started recording when I'm not in the best of moods, when bedtime is taking a lot longer than I'd like it to. I am aware when I hit record that one day I'll want to listen, and I don't want to sound like an asshole. It's a little bit of pressure I put on myself, a future angel observing how I'm behaving in this moment.

Speaking less

The intention of becoming a better listener started with the idea of speaking less. I had grown so much during 2021 that I wanted to see how far I could push myself, how much growth was possible. What was the hardest thing for me to try to get better at? Of a bunch of ideas I had, only one scared me a little - silence. The idea of spending a year not sharing what was on my mind was Terrifying. I considered it and landed on becoming a better listener as a more realistically yet acceptably challenging pursuit.

But this means I spent some time this year coming back to the idea of silence, of speaking less. I learned something really interesting.

I met a lot of new people this year. Through work, and experiencing a bunch of changeover in my friend circles, I kept having this interaction where a friend would introduce me to someone else, and they'd say something inaccurate about me, usually in a flattering way. They were trying to make me look good. Something I noticed in shutting up and listening was an instinct I have to correct a wrong. I felt compelled to speak up and set the record straight.

This instinct is equally strong whether the impression was flattering or unflattering. I'd hear someone say "Oh, I bet Allan's frustrated with how slow this is all moving," and I'd think 'That's not true,' and feel that same urge to speak up. After I observed this instinct, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I explained myself less. I stopped apologizing. I waited to see what happened if I let a misunderstanding or open idea just... be.

What I discovered: non one gives a fuck. Someone can have an unfavorable opinion of me, or believe some awful thing about me, OR believe that I walk on water - it doesn't really impact my life or who I'm trying to become.

It's an incredibly freeing idea. I pulled at this thread long enough that I started to appreciate the things that are unique and strange about me. Some of this includes things like I used to be ashamed of. My race, my family heritage. Teams I'd been cut from. Jobs I'd been let go from. These were things I didn't owe anyone an explanation for. They are mine. They are to be valued and appreciated. I started to believe the more I allowed the most authentic parts of me out in the world, the bigger it would become.

What I heard

Daughters became mothers and sounded like their mothers. And how that's a good thing, something comforting about it.

I heard there's nothing new under the sun.

I heard from a place beyond the fears. I wanted to film and write and coach and serve and live from that place.

I heard, rapidly and seemingly all at once, the rhythms shift. The mundane became fun, and beautiful. The pointless became meaningful. The learnings came in a flood.

Win, lose, or draw, this is who I'm becoming. How I love and pursue when things aren't working out are as much who I'm becoming as if I'm kind and sharing when I'm on top.

Just to be clear, I took some serious L's this year. Every time (and especially as they began to add up), I felt the rational pull towards self preservation. The logic is easy: there are limited resources in the world, and some people fall into the haves and some in the have nots. My odds were already long, so why not learn the game, and play it according to its rules.

But then something very interesting happened. A seemingly random encounter, on my normal daily hike with the puppy, a wasp stung me. I've walked that path hundreds of times a year, perhaps thousands since we moved here, and I've never even seen a wasp. On an otherwise entirely typical Friday, I was stung on my head (behind my ear). It bloody hurt.

This was a random event. Random enough that no other option occurred to me than that this was what the universe had in store for me. I considered the randomness of it and wondered whether it had to mean anything. My normal modality is to seek the meaning in everything. But this time, I got very interested in seeing if the opposite were true. If this thing happened that wasn't all too pleasant, and it didn't mean anything. If it meant something, it didn't change much from if it didn't. At the end of the day, each of us is nothing more than a series of decisions whether we were stung by a wasp or not.

The sting was some kind of allegory for some other unpleasant shit this year. I kept listening.

Explosions in the sky

This year I learned I have a specific superpower in my ability to make anyone anywhere feel at home. This came in handy, as the year went on and I kept exploring what this period was going to say about me. I would like to fancy myself as someone who operates without fear, so a big fucking swing felt more like how I see myself. The problem is, it's not like I was starting with anything to swing at. I was a middle aged guy who got laid off last year, standing in the middle of his home office cum living room, yelling, 'Give me one chance! I'll crush it.'

A pitch never came. So, not one to sit around, I went and explored to see what was out there.

I learned to listen to the bubbling curiosity of diving deeper with previously-casual acquaintances. I took the chance to wade into the waters with new friends. I invited folks to coffee. I asked to have people connect me to people I was feeling drawn to. It was scary at times. Most times it was awkward at the start.

With every opportunity pursued, I fine-tuned my ability to slow down and observe where this relationship wanted to evolve. Did we plan to get together but never really got to it? Did they show up? Did I? Was it good at whatever 'this' was, or were we both wanting to go deeper? I learned the art of an uncomplicated invitation. I got so much better at staying in gratitude at the state of things over how I imagined things could be.

This is how I stumbled into the idea of this superpower. The meetings, the coffees, the hikes, the intros - they generally went great this year. I started to understand I was helping shape this around me. I look back on hundreds of these meetings / encounters / meet-ups and they all felt positive, and inspiring, and I generally left filled with gratitude and next steps.

I struggle to explain what making someone feel at home looks or feels like. Someone said this to me pretty early in our getting-to-know-each-other, that I made them feel at home. I sat with this for a while. It's a pretty big compliment to wear. Trouble was, I struggled to disprove it. I tried pretty hard. Then I started to learn how to wear it. I leaned in and noticed I didn't even need to say much to put someone I'm with at ease. Giving them my full attention, allowing myself to be fascinated by them - in return, I received smiles and warmth and ease.

This carried over into the work assignments I took on. I took them seriously, brought my full focus to delivering on expectations to the best of my ability, I worked in advance, I did the research, I let things sit, I revisited when I progressed my thinking and not before. I kicked ass.

I was listening to ass-kicking music when I started to notice this. I'm talking This Will Destroy You. Mogwai. I'm talking Explosions in the Sky.

I forgot how much I love listening to EITS. It's gorgeous and timeless and Texas and sweat, all crunchy guitars and dark smoky venues and quiet parts setting up the fucking payoff. It's a band I'd be happy if they kept successfully hitting repeat and producing more of the same. Then they go and release Woodpecker, and this year they gave us Ten Billion People and I decided if an unconventional band like EITS can produce some of the best stuff I heard this year, I might as well try and produce some beauty of my own. They weren't a traditional band but they forged a path. I attempted to see if I could do the same.

I did the best work of my career this year. I got paid for maybe a third of it. I didn't care - I decided this year was about adding value more than taking it.

Learning to listen

I constantly listen to things. Podcasts and playlists constantly layer my experience of doing the dishes, hiking with the puppy, biking to school pickup. It's rare I turn down the constant hum to actually listen. (More often than not, I'd rather occupy myself with listening to sound than my thoughts.) Writing, editing, showering, working - music heightens these experiences for me.

A big reflection I have of this year is the few times I did turn down the music, I deepened my experience with a place. Sometimes this is incredibly unpleasant, like on an airplane. But listening to the rich stillness of a waterfront sunset in West Vancouver is worth it. Standing on my deck in Half Moon Bay, listening to the foghorn trumpeting (and if we're lucky, an owl hooting or the sea lions barking), I start to feel so much more connected to the life around me. One of the very real ways I learned how to become a better listener this year was to quiet the hum I interject and listen to what my environment provides for me. So much life.

If anything, I've learned how much farther I can go at becoming a better listener. The moments where I turned off the sound and listened to the world around me I haven't regretted. It's not easy yet for me to do this consistently - it costs a bunch of energy and focus, and sometimes I'd rather save my energy and focus for other things.

I've heard it said all meditation starts with listening. This Year of Listening was this strange pulsing beat, a constant hum of a question: 'Who are you?' I'd known coming into the year I was losing my job at a place where I thought I'd spend the rest of my career. All year long, I grappled with this loss. I was forced to decide, daily, if I was someone bigger than my circumstances, or whether what happened to me determines who I am.

I don't think it's an accident that I ended up working on becoming a better listener this year. After all the time spent slowing myself down, working past initial perspectives, shutting up every part of me that wants to have answers - it still doesn't feel natural to me. Who am I? I don't even know if I'm a better listener after working hard at it for a year. I think this year more than any I am left with a deeper understanding of all I DON'T know than the few things I know for certain. I have more questions than answers at this stage.

Who am I? If I learned anything this year, sometimes it's better to not have answers. Guess I'll have to keep listenin