Tag: Pay Attention

Today’s Students Want to Be in the Room

By Jill Szoo Wilson

When I first began teaching, I was greatly concerned with following the rules. The structure. I wanted to be excellent at classroom management, precise in my instruction, and certain that I was building lessons in keeping with the professional writing on schema and constructivist philosophy. In those early years, my focus was largely on myself as a teacher. I cared deeply about my students and always understood teaching as an act of service. I simply did not yet know where I could soften the scaffolding of instruction. A great deal has changed since then.

Over the last several years, I have begun to understand listening less as a technique and more as a pedagogical stance. It has moved from the periphery of my classroom practice to its organizing principle. The shift did not originate in theory alone, though constructivist philosophy prepared the ground. It emerged in response to the students themselves.

The students I have this year feel different from the cohort that came immediately before them, and in some ways, more familiar to me. They remind me of the people I went to college with. There is the same restless energy that marks young adulthood, though it no longer carries quite the same sharpened edge of constant self-performance. The previous group often felt harder to reach, their attention shaped by the pressure of perpetual visibility. This year’s students carry that pressure as well, yet they seem fatigued by it. Many are attempting to return to the room, to inhabit the present rather than curate it.

Their uncertainty does not read as performance. It feels like an honest hesitation about what it means to be seen in a world where exposure easily becomes spectacle. Distinctiveness may generate engagement on TikTok and offer a fleeting sense of identity, yet it does little to cultivate the steadiness required to share presence with another human being.

As I have written elsewhere, the animating question of my generation was, “What is the meaning of all this?” The question I hear now has shifted: “In all this meaning, what is the truth?” My Fall 2025 Introduction to Theatre class coined the term “Meta-Absurdism” to describe this condition. They were searching for language to articulate the experience of living inside interpretive saturation, where every moment arrives pre-framed, pre-commented upon, and already circulating before one has had time to encounter it directly. The struggle, as they described it, is not a deficit of meaning but an overabundance. The difficulty lies in its density.

That conversation lingered with me through winter break. Their description of being submerged in unending interpretation suggested something deeper than cultural noise. Beneath the compression of commentary and analysis, I sensed a more elemental need, one that had not yet found adequate expression.

To serve them well, we must respond at that level. The most powerful thing we can offer is not more framing, not sharper analysis, not quicker interpretation. It is attention. It is listening.

Listening is often described as a supporting skill in theatre training, yet its function is far more elemental. It is the ground beneath technique, the stabilizing force that allows every other aspect of the craft to take shape. Without it, even the most refined method hardens into display. Long before the modern acting classroom adopted the language of “listening,” Stanislavski articulated its essence. His writings on communion describe a disciplined form of attention in which the performer redirects focus away from the monitored performance of the self and toward the living reality of the partner. Communion exceeds mere awareness. It is reciprocal attention, the willingness to allow the other person’s truth to sculpt the moment.

By “truth,” we do not mean biographical fact or private confession. We mean the actor’s lived behavior in the present: the modulation of the voice, the shift of weight, the breath that precedes thought, the emotional temperature that forms without effort. These observable adjustments cannot be manufactured or predicted. They emerge as the natural consequence of attention. When an actor listens, they permit the real impulses of their partner to shape both internal and external response. The partner’s truth becomes the sculpting force that continually reshapes the unfolding moment.

To allow another actor’s truth to shape the moment requires the relinquishment of control. The performer sets aside the illusion of executing a predetermined design—how the line will sound, where the gesture will land, which emotion will dominate—and permits their choices to be redirected by what they receive. A hesitation, a quickened pace, a softening in the partner’s voice becomes an artistic pressure that alters the next impulse. The scene remains alive because it is formed not through private invention but through the tension of two attentions meeting in real time.

This shift carries profound pedagogical implications. Many beginning actors assume their task is to express: to display an emotion, clarify an intention, or demonstrate understanding. Listening reorders that hierarchy. Expression follows reception. The actor does not begin with what they intend to project but with what they are prepared to receive. Meaning takes shape inside relationship, where something shared begins to move between people.

This is the heart of communion: the recognition that authenticity onstage is revealed through relationship. When actors allow their partners’ impulses to shape their own, they enter the shared field where theatre actually happens, a field in which presence is not displayed but exchanged.

Stanislavski did not use the contemporary vocabulary of “listening,” yet the discipline he describes aligns closely with what modern pedagogy identifies as the actor’s most fundamental skill: the capacity to let awareness travel outward (Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares; Building a Character). His system makes clear that technique succeeds only insofar as the actor relinquishes the self-protective habit of monitoring and enters the dynamic exchange of communion. What emerges from that shift is not performance but encounter; the moment when the life of the partner becomes the organizing force of the scene, and the actor responds from connection rather than construction (Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares).

Stanislavski helps us see what listening makes possible onstage, yet the reason it matters so deeply in the classroom extends beyond performance. Many of our students move through the world feeling unanchored, flooded by information yet starved for genuine reception. They are bright and capable, but often unsure where their own voices begin beneath the noise that surrounds them. Theatre pedagogy, when rooted in listening, becomes a place where they can be gathered rather than scattered. Listening allows us to meet them where they are, to steady their attention, and to let them experience the quiet dignity of being heard without having to perform for it. In that moment, psychology and craft meet. We are not simply teaching acting; we are helping students locate themselves again. Listening becomes an affirmation that their inner life carries weight, that their presence matters, and that their voice can emerge within relationship rather than in isolation.

Meisner and the Practice of Being Changed

Meisner’s repetition work leads students into the same territory Stanislavski describes, though he arrives there through a form that is striking in its simplicity (Meisner and Longwell). Two students sit across from each other. One makes a concrete observation, such as “You look nervous” or “You’re smiling,” and the other repeats it. The language remains plain, free of interpretation or embellishment. At first, the students feel awkward and self-conscious, as though they are performing a meaningless task. Yet the structure is doing something essential. It is clearing mental space.

Repetition removes the usual distractions that pull young actors away from the present moment. They are not asked to invent emotion, craft a backstory, or plan a choice. They are asked to observe. The exercise strips away the impulse to be interesting and replaces it with the discipline of noticing what is directly in front of them. Gradually, repetition loosens the mental habits that have shaped them for years. They begin to release the tendency to plan ahead, curate themselves, or manage perception. With each exchange, attention shifts away from the internal monologue that governs much of daily life and toward the partner encountered in real time.

This is the heart of the exercise. Repetition invites the actor to enter the moment without agenda and to let attention settle on the lived behavior emerging between them. As they echo what they observe, they begin to feel how a partner’s smallest shifts can alter the emotional temperature of the exchange. The work becomes less about producing responses and more about allowing responses to arise. Over time, the exercise cultivates a quiet confidence in the actor’s capacity to be shaped by another person’s behavior. They stop reaching for significance and begin to recognize that the scene is already forming within shared attention.

This shift is transformative. Many students, especially those formed within digital culture, are accustomed to managing their image. They monitor gesture, expression, and tone with the precision of editors shaping content. Repetition interrupts that pattern. It grants permission to stop curating and begin responding. It creates a protected space in which feeling does not need to be immediately converted into display.

For students who spend much of their lives being watched yet rarely received, this work becomes more than a technique. It becomes a rehearsal for presence. It teaches them how to be affected without losing themselves, how to be changed by another person in ways that feel grounded and authentic. In this sense, repetition offers not only a method for acting but a means of reclaiming voice. That reclamation occurs not through outward projection but through the experience of being heard in the presence of another human being.

The Lineage of Listening

Listening in the art of acting has a lineage. Throughout the twentieth century, major practitioners approached it from different angles, yet each returned to a shared conviction: actors learn to act by learning to attend.

Spolin introduces listening through improvisation, giving students their first embodied experience of responding without preplanning (Improvisation for the Theater). Her games may appear playful, yet they place rigorous demands on attention. Students must register what is offered, adjust in real time, and remain available to change. The moment their focus drifts into planning, the scene loses its pulse. Spolin shows that spontaneity grows not from clever invention but from disciplined noticing. Listening steadies the uncertainty inherent in improvisation and gives it shape.

Grotowski deepens attention by removing what obstructs it (Towards a Poor Theatre). His training asks students to release muscular tension and the habitual defenses that dull perception. As those patterns fall away, sensitivity begins to widen. Students register shifts in breath, stance, and impulse. Listening moves beyond auditory awareness and becomes a full-bodied practice in which the entire field of behavior is taken in with clarity.

Brook widens this field still further to include space itself (The Empty Space). He teaches that theatre arises in the charged distance between people, not within any isolated individual. Students recognize this when shared focus alters the atmosphere of a room. Meaning forms within that space of mutual attention. Listening becomes a way of organizing experience rather than a technique applied to it.

Hagen returns attention to the texture of ordinary life (Respect for Acting). She treats observation as foundational rather than supplemental. Her exercises ask students to watch behavior as it unfolds: how a voice carries emotion before words surface, how physical stance shifts under pressure, how circumstance shapes response. Listening, in her view, develops through disciplined attention to the immediate world.

Taken together, these practitioners outline a quiet progression.
Spolin awakens attention.
Grotowski deepens it.
Brook widens it.
Hagen sustains it.

What holds their work in conversation is the understanding that listening forms the basis of connection. It steadies students who feel scattered. It slows perception so the moment can be met rather than managed. As students work within this lineage, they begin to experience incremental but unmistakable change: nervous systems settle, awareness sharpens, and the impulse to grip the moment loosens. Listening becomes less a performed skill and more a way of being that grounds them in the classroom, onstage, and within their own lives.

Theatre becomes a place where they learn to locate themselves again.

Teaching as Encounter

This understanding reshaped my teaching more deeply than any technique I once tried to master. Structure still supports the work, and craft still gives it shape, yet neither reaches a student until a relationship begins to form. Listening opened that threshold for me. It clarified the difference between the appearance of engagement and the experience of it. It reminded me that presence has weight, that a classroom gathers its meaning not through display but through the way people meet one another inside a moment.

Students arrive having spent years monitoring themselves. They know how to be visible. They know how to be evaluated. What they have practiced far less is the quiet reciprocity through which actual contact takes place. When the work turns toward listening, the atmosphere inside the room begins to shift. Responsibility for the moment no longer rests on a single pair of shoulders. Attention is shared. The room grows lighter. Conversation begins to feel less managed and more alive, shaped by what emerges rather than by what is performed.

Listening as Ethical Formation

For this reason, listening stands at the ethical center of theatre pedagogy. It requires humility and patience. It asks students to allow another person to matter in ways that influence the moment. Within a culture saturated with reaction and self-presentation, this demand is significant. Listening rehearses a different mode of being.

As the practice deepens, students develop steadier relationships with tension. They learn to remain present when meaning feels unsettled, to respond without tightening around outcome, and to sustain attention when perspectives diverge. These capacities grow gradually through repeated experiences of meeting another person with openness.

In time, theatre becomes more than performance training. It becomes a small version of shared life, something students can feel in the room before they name it. Students experience how attention is distributed across a room, how meaning forms between people, and how mutual awareness can hold both ease and difficulty. The ensemble ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a lived structure.

Listening prepares students for these relationships wherever they encounter them. It offers a way of moving through the world that is grounded, perceptive, and responsive to the lives unfolding around them.

Returning to the Beginning

When I first began teaching, I believed that if I prepared well enough, the room would respond. I trusted in structure almost instinctively. I built detailed lesson plans, mapped the arc of discussions in advance, designed assignments that felt coherent and defensible, and told myself that this was what seriousness looked like. In many ways, it was. Structure gave me confidence. It kept me from wasting their time. It allowed me to enter the classroom with a sense that I had done my part. But after enough years had passed, I began to notice that something essential could still be missing even when everything on paper was sound. A room could be organized and still feel unreachable. Students could complete every step of a well-designed exercise and remain strangely untouched by it. The work was happening, but it was not always connecting.

That realization did not arrive as a theory. It arrived as an observation. I began to notice when a student stopped bracing. I began to notice when a discussion shifted from performance into response. I began to notice how quickly the energy in a room changed once students sensed that they were not being watched for error. Their breathing slowed. Their speech lengthened. Their thoughts stopped fragmenting mid-sentence. The difference was not dramatic, and it did not produce applause. It produced attention. And attention, once it gathered, seemed to hold the work in a way no structure could accomplish on its own.

Students now come into the classroom already dispersed by the world they inhabit. Their attention has been pulled outward in so many directions before they ever sit down. There is commentary waiting for them, evaluation waiting for them, and visibility waiting for them. Listening cannot erase that atmosphere; it simply creates a different one inside the room. It makes it possible for students to experience a moment in which they are not curating themselves. Something shifts when they realize they are being met rather than measured. They begin to respond instead of adjusting.

Over time, I found that what I had once tried to secure through structure was actually emerging through attention. The lesson plan still mattered. The exercise still mattered. The craft still mattered. But they came alive only when they felt safe enough to inhabit the work itself. When listening became the ground of the work, the classroom no longer felt like a place where competence had to be demonstrated. It began to feel like a place where presence could be practiced.

That change is difficult to quantify, but it is unmistakable when it happens. Students begin to stay with one another a little longer. They hesitate before interrupting. They allow silence to do some of the work. They begin to experience themselves as part of something shared rather than as individuals managing their own projection. In those moments, they are not trying to locate themselves through output. They are locating themselves through relation. The rest follows from there.

The Four Types of Listening

By Jill Szoo Wilson

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”
— Ralph G. Nichols, often called the father of listening research

Listening is the most underestimated of the communication arts. We are trained to write, to speak, to persuade, and to present, yet few are ever taught how to listen with intention. To listen well is not a passive act but an active form of attention that shapes meaning, relationship, and understanding. It’s the moment where perception meets interpretation and where human connection either succeeds or fails.

Communication theory defines this exchange as transactional, meaning that communication is not simply sent and received but created between people. As Adler, Rosenfeld, and Proctor describe, it is “the process of creating meaning through symbolic interaction.” Within this transactional exchange, listening becomes the point of highest concentration, where attention turns into understanding. Carl Rogers called it dangerous, precisely because true listening requires vulnerability; it asks us to suspend judgment and risk being changed by what we hear.

Listening, then, is not one behavior but many. Research by Kittie Watson, Larry Barker, and James Weaver III identifies four dominant listening orientations: time-focused, task-focused, relational, and analytical. Each reflects a distinct way of processing information and a different set of underlying values. This essay examines these four types of listening as a framework for understanding how we attend, interpret, and ultimately connect with one another.

Time-Focused Listening (Chronemic Listening)

Time-focused listening is driven by the belief that attention should move quickly, clearly, and without excess. It values brevity, structure, and the efficient use of minutes. In communication studies, this approach is linked to chronemics, the study of how time itself communicates meaning. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall observed that we “speak” through time as much as through language; we reveal respect, impatience, or control by how we manage it. To those who listen in a time-focused way, punctuality and precision are signals of competence. Listening, in this sense, is a tool for progress.

There are contexts in which this style works beautifully. In an emergency room, efficiency can save a life. In an executive meeting, it can save a company hour after hour of unproductive debate. A time-focused listener cuts through digression and demands the essential: What happened? What’s next? The conversation moves forward.

Yet the very strength of this style can also be its undoing. When efficiency becomes the highest good, conversation risks losing its depth. Meaning is trimmed, edited, and sometimes distorted in the rush to move forward. A dialogue that might have opened into understanding ends the moment it becomes inconvenient. The drive to stay on schedule can flatten nuance and quiet emotion, both of which need more time than the time-focused listener is willing to allow.

Chronemic listening reminds us that time is both a boundary and a message. The length of a pause, the patience of silence, and the willingness to let another person finish communicate as powerfully as the words being used. The discipline of listening does not reject efficiency, but it resists hurry. To listen well is to know when time serves clarity and when it threatens understanding. The best listeners master both.

Most people do not choose their listening style any more than they choose their accent. It develops quietly, shaped by what life has required of them. A nurse learns to listen for urgency. A parent learns to listen for need. An executive learns to listen for solutions. Over time, those habits start to feel like personality, when in fact they are responses to circumstance. Yet habits can shift. Once a person becomes aware of how they listen, they begin to notice the moments when that habit no longer serves them. They begin to recognize what once went unnoticed — the pause that deserves patience, and the silence that carries meaning — and in that awareness, the act of listening becomes less about efficiency and more about presence.

Behaviors you might observe:

  • Interrupts or redirects when conversation feels too slow or repetitive
  • Prefers summaries, timelines, and concise explanations
  • Checks the time or shifts body posture when discussions run long
  • Emphasizes deadlines and next steps over reflection
  • Speaks in short, efficient bursts rather than elaborating

Literary Reflections:

  • In Hamlet, impatience with words that circle without arriving at meaning captures the time-focused listener’s need for progress.
  • Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants turns brevity into both virtue and limitation; its spare dialogue mirrors the efficiency and avoidance of this style.
  • The clipped exchanges in Beckett’s Endgame reveal how the desire to finish speaking can become indistinguishable from despair.

Task-Focused Listening (Action-Oriented Listening)

Task-focused listening approaches communication as a means to an end. It listens for action, not for feeling, and measures success by what gets done rather than what gets understood. Communication scholars often describe this as action-oriented listening because it privileges the completion of tasks over the exploration of emotions. Its central question is simple: What are the steps?

This listening style is common in professional and technical environments where precision matters. Engineers, coaches, and project managers often exemplify it. They listen for data, instructions, and solutions. They want structure, not story. The speaker who wanders into emotion or ambiguity risks losing their attention, not because they lack empathy, but because their focus has already shifted to implementation.

There is an undeniable efficiency in this approach. It brings order to complex projects and gives structure to communication. Teams stay aligned, and goals become measurable. A task-focused listener reduces confusion and promotes accountability, turning discussion into direction. Meetings that might once have drifted end with decisions. In a culture that prizes productivity, this kind of clarity can feel like mastery, the mark of someone who not only listens but delivers.

Yet the strength of this style can slip into excess. When listening becomes purely instrumental, every exchange is measured by its outcome. People start to feel like problems to be solved rather than voices to be heard. A colleague seeking understanding may receive a solution instead. A partner expressing worry may be met with advice. The task-focused listener hears information but misses emotion, and what is efficient begins to feel detached.

Good communicators learn to adjust. They sense when a conversation needs movement and when it needs mercy. In a crisis, this style can bring direction and calm. In a moment of fear or doubt, it can create distance. The art lies in knowing the difference. True listening asks for patience, for the courage to stay with what is unresolved. The task-focused listener grows when they learn that not every question requires an answer, and not every silence demands a plan. Sometimes the most skillful action is to wait, to hear fully, and to let meaning unfold on its own.

Behaviors you might observe:

  • Asks solution-driven questions such as “What do we need to do?”
  • Takes notes or creates lists while others are still talking
  • Moves quickly from discussion to implementation
  • Rephrases statements into actions or instructions
  • Struggles to remain engaged when the conversation turns emotional or abstract

Literary Reflections:

  • In Kafka’s The Trial, listening collapses into procedure. Every response is measured against a task no one fully understands.
  • George and Lennie in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men illustrate how pragmatic listening preserves survival but erodes tenderness.
  • Camus’ The Stranger exposes the sterility of communication reduced to function, where understanding gives way to process.

Relational Listening (People-Oriented Listening)

Relational listening is the art of hearing people, not just words. It centers on empathy, emotional nuance, and the subtle cues that reveal what someone truly means. Communication scholars describe this as people-oriented listening because it prioritizes understanding the person behind the message rather than the message alone. The relational listener’s guiding question is not What happened? or What should I do? but How does this person feel?

Where time-focused and task-focused listeners aim for progress, relational listeners aim for connection. Their attention is tuned to tone, pacing, pauses, and body language — the invisible grammar of emotion. They notice when a voice tightens, when silence stretches too long, or when laughter masks discomfort. To them, listening is a form of care. They listen to affirm dignity, create safety, and remind others that their experience matters.

The strength of this style lies in its generosity. When people feel heard, they relax into honesty. When they sense genuine empathy, they risk saying more. In counseling, teaching, and ministry, relational listening is often the bridge that allows difficult truths to surface. The listener’s patience becomes a kind of hospitality, a quiet invitation that says, Go ahead, and finish your thought.

Even empathy needs structure. When relational listening stretches too far, compassion can turn into depletion. The listener begins to carry emotions that do not belong to them, mistaking absorption for understanding. Out of kindness, they may soften hard truths or avoid conflict altogether. What begins as care can quietly become a burden. Over time, the constant pull to soothe and affirm leaves the listener weary. True empathy does not require taking on another person’s pain; it asks for presence without possession. Skilled relational listeners learn to stay open without being overtaken.

To listen relationally is to recognize that communication is not merely an exchange of information but an encounter between human lives. It transforms listening from a polite gesture into a moral act that honors both the speaker’s story and the listener’s limits.

Behaviors you might observe:

  • Maintains gentle eye contact and open posture
  • Uses verbal affirmations such as “I understand” or “That sounds difficult”
  • Allows silence to stretch without rushing to fill it
  • Mirrors emotion through tone or facial expression
  • Notices changes in energy, mood, or body language and adjusts response accordingly

Literary Reflections:

  • In Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, characters listen less to words than to the emotional current beneath them. Connection emerges in the space between sentences.
  • Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard depicts the fatigue of constant empathy; everyone listens, yet no one is truly heard.
  • In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s insight arises from learning to listen without projection. Misunderstanding gives way to recognition.

Analytical Listening (Content-Oriented Listening)

Analytical listening seeks to understand before it judges. It is a methodical and often contemplative way of attending to information. Communication researchers describe this as content-oriented listening because it focuses on ideas, evidence, and reasoning rather than emotion or efficiency. The analytical listener’s question is, What is true here, and how do I know?

This orientation thrives in environments that prize depth of thought such as universities, courtrooms, laboratories, and newsrooms. Analytical listeners are comfortable with ambiguity. They prefer complexity to certainty and are willing to hold competing ideas in tension until clarity emerges. Their patience for uncertainty can feel unsettling to those who want quick answers, yet this restraint is precisely what allows analysis to deepen understanding.

Analytical listeners excel in situations that demand discernment. They attend to structure, logic, and supporting detail. They look for patterns in language, for assumptions buried inside arguments, and for evidence that distinguishes opinion from fact. They are often the ones who pause before responding, not because they are disengaged, but because they are still listening, not only to the speaker but to their own developing understanding.

Still, this style carries its own risks. The analytical listener may appear detached or overly cerebral. In a commitment to objectivity, they can miss the emotional undercurrents that shape how meaning is received. A purely analytical approach to human conversation can flatten what should be relational. Understanding the content of a message is not the same as understanding its impact.

The discipline of analytical listening reminds us that comprehension and empathy are not opposites but partners. Thought without empathy becomes sterile; empathy without thought becomes unmoored. The most effective communicators are those who can think critically without ceasing to care.

Behaviors you might observe:

  • Asks clarifying or probing questions before responding
  • Takes time to process before speaking
  • Analyzes the logic or structure of what is being said
  • References evidence, examples, or inconsistencies in arguments
  • Appears calm or neutral even during emotionally charged discussions

Literary Reflections:

  • In Twelve Angry Men, Juror Eight models analytical listening as moral discipline, withholding judgment until comprehension is complete.
  • T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock portrays a mind so devoted to precision that it loses the ability to act.
  • Orwell’s 1984 presents analytical listening under constraint, where discernment itself becomes an act of rebellion.

Conclusion

Listening represents a continuum of attentional choice. Each orientation, time-focused, task-focused, relational, and analytical, highlights a distinct way of organizing perception and constructing meaning. Together, they illustrate how listeners shape understanding through focus, habit, and value.

Within the transactional model of communication, meaning arises through interaction. Listener and speaker participate equally in that exchange, shaping one another’s interpretations as the dialogue unfolds. Listening functions as the center of communication, the place where awareness becomes understanding and understanding becomes relationship.

To study listening is to study connection itself. Every exchange of attention expands the shared field of meaning between people, allowing communication to do what it was designed to do: create understanding that endures beyond words.

Further Reading

Adler, Ronald B., Lawrence B. Rosenfeld, and Russell F. Proctor II. Interplay: The Process of Interpersonal Communication. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Floyd, Kory. Interpersonal Communication. McGraw-Hill, 2011.

Hall, Edward T. The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time. Anchor Books, 1983.

Nichols, Ralph G., and Leonard A. Stevens. Are You Listening? McGraw-Hill, 1957.

Rogers, Carl, and Richard E. Farson. Active Listening. University of Chicago Industrial Relations Center, 1957.

Watson, Kittie W., Larry L. Barker, and James B. Weaver III. Listening Styles Profile. Spectra, 1995.

This essay was originally posted on my Jill Szoo Wilson Substack.

Did You Think You Were the Only One?

A probably true tale about order, ambition, and the secret lives keeping the city running while we’re busy thinking we do.

Men with briefcases move up and down the streets like ants: all in lines, moving this way and that. Scouts sent forth from their secret dwellings, with secrets at their sides and secrets in their minds. They rush into the world to gather and to hunt, and when the day is done they hold their provision over their heads, like ants, but also like African women carrying water back to their children.

All is a race, if you think of it thus.

In the shadowed jungles of the sewer holes and pipes that run wild under the city, there is another kind of race. As the suits and ties vibrate with the ticking of the clock above, there are men and women of valor whose orders have been pecked out by feats of daring and strength. Yellow eyes, but sometimes green, flash through the underground tunnels and make plans for the sun-filled above.

The cats run the city below the city, and there is nothing we can do to stop them.

“I call to order the weak and the strong; everyone has their place. Some of us thin and some of us fat, all are fit to run the race.” Garrin’s voice was loud: a little too loud, to be honest. It rose into the echoing chambers of the 27th District of the sewer line and fell flat with self-importance, but also boredom. Garrin was wry and dry and not at all shy, which is why he was elected to the position of Mayor.

Their voices and fur fill the underground roads. If you don’t believe me, just ask them yourself.

Camille, a mostly white cat, lay on the recently swept floor and licked her right paw. “Garrin, I need to be given my daily task now because I have to be home early this evening. One of the humans I live with keeps feeding my kittens milk, which is giving them diarrhea, so I want to be home in time to feed them myself.”

“I know what you mean,” said Fluffy McHairball (a name given to her by a female human with no imagination at all). Fluffy continued, “My kids are growing up without me, Garrin. You’re giving us too much to do.”

Garrin laughed out of the corner of his mouth as his tail wagged back and forth, giving away his annoyance. “Ladies, please. I can announce the daily tasks with speed and efficiency as soon as you stop complaining.”

Camille did not appreciate Garrin’s belittling tone. She lowered her ears, looked away, and wrapped her tail around herself. “Spoken like a man whose kittens are grown,” she whispered. The other women around her chuckled and rolled their eyes.

Ignoring Camille and the attention she drew, Garrin began to announce the daily tasks to the cats under his charge, in alphabetical order, of course.

“Anthony, I need you to target the garbage bins outside the seafood restaurants today. As we are all aware, I had to fire Catpernicus last week because his was the seafood beat and he was woefully lazy, thus, the embarrassing shortage of seafood in our storage bins.” Anthony stood like a soldier, ready and willing to carry out his newly given orders.

“Yes, sir,” said the young Anthony, whose voice creaked with puberty when he spoke.

“Bartholomew,” Garrin continued, “you’ve done well on your rounds as of late, so I am promoting you to the Starbucks run. We need you to carry as many of the cup sleeves back as possible because, let’s be honest, they are fun to play with and they work well as portable scratchers.”

“Garrin, you’ve got to be joking!” interrupted Fluffy. “The humans may not mind depleting the forests for such waste, but we do not need to be a part of the madness by collecting their bad choices.”

Garrin’s tail began again to wag unconsciously with annoyance. “Fluffy, please. If you are ever mayor (which I doubt), you can make the decisions. As you know, we have brought your grievance to the Board of Governors, and they have settled the issue. The cup sleeves are useful to us, and we are not the ones cutting down the trees. Can I please continue so you can all begin and end your day in a timely manner?”

Fluffy yawned in disgust and then licked herself in spite.

Feeling the weight of their insubordination, Garrin listed the rest of the daily tasks in quick succession and then ended their meeting with the familiar chant:
“Go forth into the streets, the weak and the strong, everyone has their place. Some of us thin and some of us fat, all are fit to run the race.”

The young cats exited the tunnels with fervor, and the older cats sauntered into the shadows with their tails pointing high in the air, in Garrin’s general direction.

Did you think we were the only ones who daily race about like ants? I hope you will accept that sometimes you are wrong.

Camille’s eyes squinted as she climbed into the sunshine. The day was warm, and the sky was bright blue, the way it often is when spring blankets the earth. She liked the way the warmth of the sun sank into her coat and how the steamy cement of the street felt under her paws.

“Climb the highest branch of the highest tree and loudly cry,” she repeated her daily task into the air around her. “How embarrassing,” she said to herself. “And I am sure to break a claw.”

Camille’s task was the most loathed of the daily tasks, more of a monthly task really, but someone had to do it. Today it was her turn. The objective of the task was simple: it served as a test of the emergency services at their disposal. “This is only a test,” Garrin’s instructions replayed in her head.

It would be horrible if one of the kittens ever jumped onto a tree and ran to the top only to find that the local Fire Department had silently decided they would no longer be saving furry, four-legged babies from the highest branches. So today, Camille was charged with the job of testing their emergency system. “For the children,” she reminded herself.

As she trotted up and down the streets, through human legs covered with denim, under long cotton dresses that smelled like perfume, and around strollers filled with crying babies, Camille looked for the highest tree.

“Hi, Camille,” said Rupert, an overweight English Bulldog, as she walked along her path.

Camille answered with her ears held high, “Hi there, Rupert. Nice collar. Is it new?”

“Ah, Camille, that is what I love about you. You’re so observant. And nice to observe, if you know what I mean. If only we were the same species. If you know what I mean.”

She knew what he meant.

“You’re a charmer, Rupert! Have a nice day.”

Rupert passed her and then turned to watch her as she sauntered away.

Moments after she passed Rupert, Camille spotted a tree that towered above most others along the sidewalks within her district. It stood across the street near one of the many Starbucks along this road, and she watched for a moment as Bartholomew pranced away from the garbage can outside the door. He was carrying three cup sleeves between his teeth, and crumbs of a scone fell from the sides of his mouth. “Garrin will be so pleased,” she thought to herself.

After looking both ways, which is the number one rule in their employee handbook called Roadkill: A Manual of Safety and Instruction, Camille headed toward the tree.

Camille sat at the base of the tree and looked up. She closed her eyes for a moment and enjoyed the breeze that blew past her nose in the shade of the leaves. She could hear the sounds of the city street, the honking cars, the women clicking about in their high heels, and the men talking to ghosts on their Bluetooth devices, and she swayed to the rhythm of the cacophony. She could smell the bread newly baked in the bakery and the hint of ground coffee wafting onto the sidewalk from inside the Starbucks. Camille took in a deep breath through her nose and released it out through her mouth, a moment of meditation and being present.

It is good to pause and enjoy the moment.

Camille stretched out her two front paws and stretched deeply into her back paws before calmly and aptly climbing the highest tree. She had done this many times before. Once she reached the top, she lifted her voice even higher. “Meow!” she called. And then again. And again. Camille’s body was mostly hidden by the network of branches and leaves surrounding her, which gave her the courage to sing with volume and flair. To be honest, she had a great singing voice.

Suddenly, a shriek filled the air, breaking into the cacophony of sound on the city streets, and the sunlight was joined by hues of red and blue. The cars stopped honking, the women stopped clicking, and the men exchanged their long sentences for pleas to “wait” and “hold on.” The fire truck came screaming down the road, and Camille felt proud of her performance among the leaves that danced around her.

Within a matter of minutes, a particularly handsome fireman was lowering Camille from the tree and placing her paws gently on the warm sidewalk. Sounds of applause filled the air like a symphony conducted for a hero. The fireman blushed, Camille rubbed a “thank you” against his leg, and both trotted off in separate directions, pleased with the jobs they had done.

We all feel proud to have done our jobs well. Oh, did you think it was only you?

Her daily task completed, Camille felt free and content. She thought of strolling home, but realizing dinner time was still hours away, she made her way down a side street that led to the park.

A grassy knoll filled with light saw Camille walking his way, and he called for her to spread out atop his softness.

Nature speaks its desires and enjoys the companionship of those who listen. If you listen to it, you will know what I mean.

Camille lay in the center of the grassy knoll, careful not to dip her tail into the water below, and closed her eyes. She rolled her head back and forth to enjoy the shades of orange and yellow and red frolicking behind her eyelids. She could feel the heat of the ground on her back and the heat of sun on her stomach. She breathed in through her nose and released through her mouth, in and out, in and out, until her consciousness slipped into dreaming.

As she slept, the world around Camille continued to huff and to puff, like a train on a track with a destination to reach. Men with briefcases moved up and down the streets like ants, all in lines, moving this way and that. Scouts sent forth from their secret dwellings, with secrets at their sides and secrets in their minds.

Did you think you were the only one?

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

Painting by Heiko Müller