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What a ‘listening café’ teaches us about being better listeners

Two young women near a huge red umbrella beside a cafe-style table against a wood fence. Across from them sits on old person with white hair wearing a turquoise jacket and a black cap.
Gretchen K. Wing
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Salish Current © 2024
Just talk — she is listening, really listening: Kay Keeler, at right, hears what Nicolle (at left, from Issaquah via Venezuela) and Tonya (from Seattle) have to say, at her booth at the Lopez Island Farmers Market on Sept. 14.

The handwritten sign and its offer of “a penny for your thoughts” is frequently met with timid glances of uncertainty.

Not everyone takes Kay Keeler up on the offer to step into her Listening Café, which consists of informal chairs set up at the Lopez Island Farmers Market.

Many passersby say they don’t have time or that they don’t have anything to talk about. Striking up a conversation with a stranger, after all, can be intimidating, perhaps even taboo in a world that is increasingly disconnected and polarized. In fact, it takes a certain level of curiosity and vulnerability to accept the offer.

Those game enough to sit down at Keeler’s Listening Café receive a literal penny for their thoughts. In exchange, Keeler and occasional volunteers offer judgment-free listening sessions.

“I really want to start an epidemic of listening, but not shallow listening — really listening to what people are saying,” Keeler, 88, said. “My commitment is to create a new world where all people belong to communities that listen greatness out of each other, leaving people with playful wonder and the ecstasy of just being alive.”

It’s been a few years since Keeler started her Listening Café, but she still gets something out of every conversation.

One of Keeler’s first interactions at the café was with a man she recalls as visibly unhappy. The conversation began with a declaration about his political affiliation. As Keeler continued listening, the conversation shifted. Within minutes, the man opened up about how lonely he was feeling after his wife’s death.

“It was not the conversation that it started out as,” Keeler said. “Everybody has opinions about everything, really. …If you can listen to that, then eventually people relax and just talk about what’s important to them.”

Christine Kerlin, who has volunteered as a listener at the café several times, said people always found something to talk about, whether it was their family, their job, traveling or a recent experience.

“I think my impression is that people are very interesting and have interesting things to say about what’s on their mind,” Kerlin said. “It’s a delightful surprise to sit down with a person who’s a stranger to you and learn more about them in a very friendly, gentle way, and to get somebody to talk about themselves.”

Both Keeler and Kerlin said the Listening Café has given them opportunities to engage with individuals whose viewpoints and life experiences vary from their own. Sometime such conversations ignite a gut reaction to butt in or tune out. Keeler says it’s key to take a step back and remove judgment.

“That’s kind of where I’m at today, like really open to being open so that people feel comfortable in saying what they think,” she said.

Keeler recently finished her final Listening Café on Lopez Island as she prepares to move to Seattle. She’s considering continuing the tradition there, and it’s unclear if anyone will take up the mantle on Lopez Island.

Regardless, the impact of the Listening Café has spread well beyond Lopez Island. Since starting, Keeler has given out nearly 100 Listener caps and enjoys getting reports of how they’re used.

Two of those caps went to Gwen Corolla, who met Keeler through an online course for seniors. Corolla was fascinated with Keeler’s Listening Café, and she and her husband decided to wear the caps to an ice cream parlor near their home in Virginia.

The duo ended up having only one conversation that day with a young nanny and her three-year-old ward about the little voice inside each of our heads that tells us the difference between right and wrong.

“We don’t often have meaningful conversations with three-year-olds, but to ask someone who’s three a question and see them consider it and give you a very considered answer — you know, the older I get, the more appreciation I have for really young children because they’re learning all the time and most of us think we already know it all,” she said.

Like any skill, truly listening requires discipline. Luckily, attending a Listening Café isn’t a prerequisite to developing the skill, Keeler said.

“Just start listening to people in your life and work on it and really look to give yourself a grade. How did you listen to that person? And tell the truth. You know, I interrupted all the time. I didn’t hear anything they said,” she said. “Then it’s ‘Oh I’m going to do better. I’ll give myself a 3% on that one, but next week, I’m going to have a 20% conversation.’”

The Salish Current is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, online local news organization serving Whatcom, San Juan and Skagit counties by reporting local news with independence and strict journalistic integrity, and by providing fact-based information and a forum for civil commentary.

Sydnee Chapman is a freelance and investigative reporter. Her work has appeared in news outlets in Washington, Utah and Fiji.