Some persons who have come to my office for counseling are tone deaf to counsel, or partially so. A tone deaf person can hear a tone but not reproduce it. They hear something that is a noise to them with some meaning but not the adequate meaning, either to their minds or their ability to follow it in its own vibrations. The tone deaf person, insisting on singing with the choir is a scourge to the director and the choir, and may even reach the congregation so to reduce the rendition meant for excellence to devotion – replaced in the distraction from the intended meaning. An analyst, in reviewing major films noted that Marlon Brando acted in a way that changed much of the evaluation of the film genre in the years after he gained eminence as an actor. After Brando, according to the analyst, many persons missed the message of any film by concentrating on the performance style of actors. We are now fed such statements as the story was not effective, or was excellent, but missed because the discussion was on how an actor performed. A long time open secret of great acting is that the actor is not seen, but the character becomes the person portrayed. Audiences did not see Lawrence Olivier in Hamlet but Hamlet, himself. According to the analyst, when Brando acted we saw Brando. Directors proved their greatness in getting actors to become the character.
Listeners may only appear to be listening but are so distracted by varieties of forces that they seem to communicators to be on another planet. If they are in proper mode, counselors may feel, or discover if the counselee is out of tune with the context. The counselee has not been taught to listen, has not sensed that the best analysis and action is found by interaction with others who concentrate on any issue, even a personal one. (We can be helped with even poor counsel, if we give ourselves to evaluating what we have learned, and doubting this or that so to ask pertinent questions first of ourselves, perhaps of other counselors.) Some persons go through counseling not to listen, learn, consider, understand and then act on their own, but to simply say they have been to counseling and it hasn’t worked. They didn’t take steps to listen, follow through and sensibly adjudicate the situation or themselves. They had decided before they were greeted by the counselor whom they sought for counseling. This often occurs for persons who have decided to conclude their marriages. The best counseling they can receive is for the counselor to help them discover the charade, without healing. Similar scenes occur with those who are at odds with their parents, or parents with children, bosses with workers, even scholars in one field talking to scholars in another field – or even with God. I have, from some obligations, sat through exchanges in which neither party is listening to the other. Much would be improved by concluding the meeting which is intensifying the problem. A recent article analyzing the decline at General Motors in the first decade of the 21st Century related to economists invited to management, and the loss of listening and exchanging views with the engineers, workers on the line, and others, led to a concept of profit making, and a decline in the quality of the product and management. The government had to rescue several massive companies that were supposed to be savvy about making money but failing to listen and learn, over a course of years, to those who could assist in process, and doing so meet the needs and expectations of the people using the product.
What is the answer to the folly? First we must be attentive, attentive to life and the way life works that includes considerable folly. The folly needs to be dried off as we dry ourselves after a shower. It is gotten rid of by noting it, perhaps applying a bit of humor to it, admitting it, and refusing it. We permit a little of it in our children, but with the reason that they do not yet know better. Counsel is not demanding, not dictation, patch work, or partisan unless revealed. I soon let people resorting to my counsel know that I am Christian and draw my values from Scripture. I am a teacher and want to find the truth within my presuppositions that will help me and those who have confidence in my attitude and words reflected in my conduct that I may be able to assist them in their concerns. On occasion it takes a bit of time to either sever our discussion, or accept the direction in which it is going. I have received extravagant compliments of those buying into our mutual efforts, and cold shoulders, usually silence, from those who did not. We do well to understand the context in which we are willing to make life changes. The Lord directs us. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020