Most People Don't Hear the Solo

Learning to hear the melody under the words

I started noticing this while listening—again—to Larry Carlton’s solo on “Kid Charlemagne.” Most people hear pleasant background music. If you play guitar, you hear tension and restraint. Harmonic precision. Control. The way he builds and releases pressure.

You hear mastery.

That’s when it hit me: this is what it’s like to listen carefully to anything.

Most of us don’t.

ADHD Forced Me to Slow Down

For years, I thought I did. I was quick. Engaged. Had something to say—often clever, sometimes funny, usually well-received. In meetings, I could shape a thought fast and land it clean.

I thought that was attention.

It wasn’t.

An ADHD diagnosis forced something different. Before that, my mind ran from thought to thought and I assumed that was normal. Medication didn’t make me profound. It slowed the sprint just enough for me to notice what I was actually doing.

I wasn’t listening.

I was waiting to talk. Preparing my solo.

Recognition vs. Discernment

I thought the issue was recognition—people not noticing what was hard. But the deeper issue was discernment. Accurate perception without inflation or dismissal.

Psychologists studying resilience have found that people who can accurately acknowledge their own progress handle stress better and sustain change longer. But accuracy is a discipline.

Richard Feynman put it bluntly: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Listening turned out to be how I stopped fooling myself.

Not cheerleading. Not self-criticism. Witness.

Stepping Off the Stage

So I stopped sharing for a while.

That felt like withdrawal. I always have something to say. And not bad stuff. Insightful stuff. Things that sound smart. Things that make people laugh. Stepping back felt like voluntarily giving up oxygen.

But in the quiet, something changed.

Instead of composing my next insight, I started listening for what old-timers call “the melody of the words.” Not just content. Tone. Fear inside the theology. Longing inside certainty. Pain inside confidence.

I remember sitting there one night, arms folded, thinking, “This guy has no idea what he’s saying.” And then realizing—I didn’t either.

And I heard something uncomfortable.

I was harsh.

Internally dismissive. Quick to judge phrasing, belief, metaphors—especially the God language. I told myself I valued nuance. In reality, I was practicing superiority.

The ears I thought were trained were tuned to critique.

Everyone Is Talking From a Private Context

Here’s what listening longer revealed: most people are speaking from a context no one else fully knows.

They’re stitching together private history, regret, hope, fear—trying to make sense of it in real time. Of course it doesn’t always sound coherent. Of course language gets clumsy.

They’re the only ones who know where the danger was.

Just like the guitarist hearing the harmonic tension inside the phrase, only the person living the life knows the moment everything almost went wrong. The morning they almost didn’t get up. The resentment they didn’t act on.

From the outside, it can sound like noodling.

From the inside, it’s survival. Sometimes mastery.

The Paradox of Attention

Here’s the strange part: the more I practiced noticing real effort in other people—the consistency, the restraint, the small technical shifts—the more I developed the ability to see my own without distortion.

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan call it competence feedback. Specific recognition of real skill. We need that.

But sometimes the only qualified observer is you.

And you’re not qualified until you learn to listen.

Something else shifted too. As I trained myself to hear the melody underneath words—even words I disagreed with—I found I could connect with people I used to silently argue with.

The God language didn’t change. My beliefs didn’t change. But I could hear the human need inside the phrasing. The gratitude. The relief. The attempt to make meaning.

When you hear that, it’s hard to stay harsh.

What Quiet Transformation Looks Like

Quiet transformation doesn’t look dramatic.

It looks like restraint. Like fewer interruptions. Like letting someone finish a thought. Like noticing when your internal commentary sharpens into contempt—and choosing not to follow it.

It looks like stepping offstage long enough to hear the room.

You’re the only one who knows what you’ve overcome.

But you might not know it either if you’re always performing.

Sometimes the work isn’t becoming more articulate.

It’s becoming quiet enough to hear what’s actually happening—inside you, and inside the person sitting across from you.

And once you develop those ears?

You don’t need to win the room.

You just need to listen

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