This rant isn’t about Chinese.
Well, it is.
To an extent.
But, it’s more so about what one Chinese character can teach you about an overlooked part of communication.
Yes, I’m talking about listening.
In Stephen Covey’s best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit No 5 is “ Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
"To listen is to give attention to sound or action. When listening, one is hearing what others are saying, and trying to understand what it means. The act of listening involves complex affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes." - Wikipedia
At its root, listening is the act of mindfully hearing and attempting to comprehend the meaning of words spoken by another person.
But listening is also the most important ingredient for building strong leadership, healthy relationships, and thriving organizations.
If you need proof, just think of a recent time when you felt like no one was listening.
How did that make you feel?
Did your engagement increase or decrease?
Let’s face it, listening is a critical skill you need to hone.
Before I tell you how, first I have to teach you about the forgotten art of Chinese calligraphy.
What the hell is Chinese calligraphy?
Why does it matter?
For me, Chinese calligraphy is a sensual experience.
It engages all the senses and completely captures my attention.
Let me explain.
You see, black ink has its own magic.
It has its own life.
It has its own way of moving and creating a bond between the brush, the white paper, and the mind and heart of the reader.
The aesthetics of each calligraphic work depend on its composition, balance and proportion of dots and lines.
Some brush strokes are large and bold, some are thin and smooth, others are curved and flowing and they're all positioned in empty space.
They express your mood, feelings and allow your personality to shine through the characters.
Calligraphy is an act of training the mind and engraving the words not only on the paper but into your heart.
I, like many students of Chinese, was first attracted to Chinese because of the writing system, which is surely one of the most fascinating scripts in the world.
The study of Chinese characters can become a lifelong obsession, and you soon find yourself engaged in the daily task of accumulating them, drop by drop from the vast sea of characters, in a vain attempt to hoard them in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.
The shape, size, and type of hair in your brush, the color and density of your ink, as well as the speed and texture of the paper can influence the character on the rice paper. You can also influence the result by the quantity of ink you let the brush take up, by pressure, inclination, and direction you give to the brush, producing different strokes.
To write Chinese characters you need "four friends” - paper, brush, ink stick, and inkstone.
The rules are simple, there are only eight moves of the brush.
Once you master them and combine them, you’ll get a well-known character 永 meaning 'everlasting.'
The characters are so complicated!
There are so many characters!
There’s no alphabet!
These are three of the most common reasons why people don’t want to read and write Chinese.
Although there are around 85,000 official characters, you only need around 2,000 for everyday life.
Each character can take you on a fascinating journey through Chinese history and culture.
"It’s true there’s no alphabet, but you can actually mentally break down each character into smaller meaningful components that are easier to remember with a bit of fantasy and imagination."
Chinese characters look complicated, but they’re mostly made up of smaller building blocks called radicals.
They are simple and you combine them to create a more complex character.
For example.
言 translates as ‘words’ or ‘speech' because the radical 口means mouth and the three lines above represent ’something coming out from the mouth’, hence words.
Not bad, right?
Now, consider a more complex character 語.
It means language.
Why?
It consists of ‘words' on the left side, the top right radicle五 means 5 and it's positioned directly above 口 mouth.
Well, a language is words that five mouths can speak, right?
Every character tells a tiny little story.
Actually, let me rephrase that.
Every character is storytelling on steroids. (Check my riff here)
I admit, learning to speak Chinese is a super-hard task.
But learning to read may be less difficult.
ShaoLan Hsueh, a Taiwanese entrepreneur, couldn't find a way to inspire her kids to learn Chinese, so she developed a visual method to make reading Chinese fun and easy.
Chinese is littered with tiny gems - like the one I’m about to share down below - that serve as fantastic rules to live by.
Or, at the very least, ‘consider’ as you go about navigating your own life’s journey.
One such gem is 聽 or ‘listen.’
It’s, hands down, the most beautiful Chinese character I’ve ever seen. You read it as ‘tīng' with a flat intonation.
That’s what the horizontal line above ‘i’ signals.
聽 captures the true nature of what it means to be present and listen to someone.
Let me break it down here for you.
The radical 耳 on the left side represents ‘ear.'
So yeah, listen with your years.
Check.
But that’s just a part of a whole.
Moving clockwise, 十 means ’ten' and it's sitting on a radical 目 that represents ‘eye.’
Let that soak in for a minute.
It tells you that to listen with your ears only is not enough.
To fully understand, you need to look at the person as if you had ten eyes.
You need to look, observe, and catch the unsaid gestures and body language.
The next radical, a horizontal line 一 means ‘one.’
It reminds you to focus on the person that is talking to you and give her your undivided attention.
Let me pause here and say that again.
Undivided attention.
Full concentration on what someone is saying.
That’s the power of 一.
The radical 心 is very famous, it means ‘heart.’
Guess what?
When you pay close attention to 愛, the Chinese character for “ love”, you will notice a heart right in the middle of it.
Amazing, isn't it?
Using your heart allows you to listen more deeply and connect with the person you're listening to at an emotional level, not just rationally.
Interestingly, when you look closer, you can see the right part of the character ‘listen' 聽 is identical to the right part of the character 德 meaning ‘virtue.'
Looks like listening to others is a type of virtue.
But I digress here.
Last but not least, there’s a radical 王.
It’s one of those radicals you learn among the first to recognize when you get crazy enough to study Chinese.
It’s so important that you can see it on the tiger's forehead.
No kidding.
In Asia, the tiger is revered as the king of the beasts and the four stripes on his forehead form the character 'wang' which means 'king.'
Now, where were we?
Oh, yes.
Tīng.
In closing, 聽, means you have to listen with your ears, eyes and heart and treat the person as a king.
Simon Sinek was right when he said ‘Hearing is listening to what is said and listening is hearing what isn’t said.’
When you learn to listen this way, you no longer cloud your mind with what you want to say next.
You’re present, in the moment, and the other person will notice.
You’ll ask better questions, gain better insights, and walk away at the end of the conversation with a great understanding of what was said.
Imagine a world where everyone felt heard and understood.
Wouldn’t you want to live in such a world?
P.S. Like what you’re reading here? Well, you have three choices really.
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3. When you are ready to level up, hire me.
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