Editorial reflection
Listen to someone you know well, and notice how early your own answer begins to assemble itself. Their sentence is still in the middle; we have already guessed where it ends. We have recognized an old complaint, pulled out a piece of advice, or chosen the first line of our defense. The face stays a listener’s face. Inside, the preparations for speaking are under way. In that hurry, the person across from us is folded back into the acquaintance we already had of them before they have finished what they came to say.
In the eighteenth chapter of the Gita, Krishna, having set out the whole of his teaching, tells Arjuna to weigh it in full and then act as he chooses. The verse is 18.63: “Thus I have declared to you a knowledge more secret than the secret itself. Reflect on it fully, and then do as you wish.” Immediately afterward he speaks again; the teaching continues, and the call to take refuge in him follows. So lifting this one verse out and making the whole dialogue mean a license to do as one pleases would be an unfair reading. Even so, the room for reflection granted here draws the attention. The listener has to understand what he has heard.
There are many ways of accepting a piece of advice. Sometimes the point truly lands. Sometimes the age of the speaker, their position, or their closeness to us leaves us no choice except to nod. Sometimes we say yes so that the conversation will not run long. Given room to reflect, we might also hear the reason behind our own yes. Is this decision mine, or am I only keeping a relationship in good repair for now?
Granting that room inside a household conversation can feel a little awkward. When the other person wants to think further, it can seem that what we said was not respected. This is exactly the place to pause for a moment. The worth given to advice shows sometimes in its prompt acceptance and sometimes in the serious thought spent on it. For someone we count as our own, the time they take to think can be counted inside the closeness too.
Some work remains on the listener’s side as well. Staying silent is not enough by itself. Try repeating what was said in your own words: where is the meaning clear, and where have we added a guess of our own? Take the part that stung, set it apart from the rest, and listen to it again. There may be a fact in it that we have been avoiding. Or the fact may be sound and the conclusion drawn from it incomplete. Telling the two apart needs a little open space in the mind.
In a disagreement that space earns its keep. Understanding the other person’s argument exactly does not make us its follower. It does secure one thing: our answer then meets what was actually said. The old accounts, the guessed intention, and the words actually heard no longer get tied into one bundle. The tone of the conversation may change as well. The other person’s sentence has been allowed to stand at its full size.
The next time you ask someone close for advice, keep the answer beside you for a while after you have heard it. Beyond an immediate thank you or an immediate rebuttal there is one more possible sentence: I would like to think about this and come back to you. And if the advice was yours, let that place to return to remain open. This small pause in the Gita can leave us with a question of about this size: once we have said our piece, are we able to give the other person’s thinking its time as well?
Sources
Main edition: the Gita Press Sanskrit and Hindi Mahabharata, Bhishma Parva 42, Bhagavad Gita 18.63; the passage that follows, 18.64 to 66, was read as well. The sense was checked against the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust’s independent translation, 18.63.