I don’t think
it’s so easy to explain away though. I have shop staff now and one can listen
and hears my words , ask her to repeat what I said and she will do it; verbatim,
but the other, she can not stop thinking inside her own head to hear the words
I speak.
If I ask her to
be silent while I talk to her on the phone, she hears nothing other than the
repetition inside her head of the words she never got to speak to me….She can
listen but she does not hear any thing.
And as annoying
as I find her, my solution is simple, I just don’t allow her to pick up the
phone any more.
In the big wide
world though I am wondering how many others are listening but can not hear a
word for the jumble that is their life, their thoughts and their distractions.
Politicians for
instance, an easy one to criticize some of you will suggest, but I ask simply,
if they heard the voters would they not do more, faster.
They listen but
they fail to hear the tremendous tidal wave sweeping the planet right now of
angered voters.
From America to
Germany, Spain, Italy and Greece angry mobs are not just rioting for the sake
of anarchy they are trying to get the attention of people who have stopped
hearing the 99%.
I strongly
believe that we have to be taught to hear again.
As a child
throughout the first 5 or 6 years of schooling we would all sit around a mat,
cross legged and listen the teacher as she read a book to us. I’m sure we all
heard it differently for that is the beauty of imagination and fantasy, but
after each story was read to us, no matter whether we pictured our selves in
the story as the hero or the heroine, the slayer of the savior, we were asked a
series of questions and marked upon our answers to the story line to ensure
that had basic understanding of the story and its moral. At home even my
parents read stories to me, sometimes at bed time and sometimes just sitting on
their knee on the lounge room. I loved the safety and the especially the way
the words sounded coming from such authoritarian voices.
My parents had
no TV, thye listened to radio drama and had to imagine the storyline that they
heard. They had to hear or they had nothing.
I wonder these
days if children are read to by their busy parents, if teachers still sit
children down and read a story to them, teaching a child not just a story but
the art of hearing what is spoken. Playing voiceless games of war or myth on
the internet is just not the same. Many people listen but few people truly “hear”
these days and I find it sad.
In a world at
the brink of anarchy in so many countries I wish people would stop and hear the
voices of reason, stop and hear the needs of others, stop and hear the
disparity between the rich and poor, that both sides would sit and hear the
others point of view.
I lived through
some tough times in the past year or so in another land and from the beginning
people spoke of “dialogue” being the answer…the problem with dialogue is that
it means speaking…the problem seemed that no one on the other end of the speak
was HEARING the voices as they spoke. Trouble continues to this day as it does
in so many other countries right now because listening occurred, but hearing failed them.
But perhaps
there is a simpler truth to it all. As we are so so busy these days texting,
interneting, working on multi tasking, perhaps it’s the words of M.Scott Peck
that ring the truest of my cause, "You cannot truly listen to anyone and
do anything else at the same time."
Perhaps we
should stop for a moment and listen to each other. Stop what is so important to
“us” and “hear” what is important to another.
Although with
the arrogance that much of the world seems to have become accustomed too, the
wealth divide and the importance of everyone but us the little guy, perhaps
it’s the words of Robert Schuller that speak the most truth of the matter, “Big
egos have little ears”.
I enjoy
listening, even if its my Sri Lankan staff or Filipino chefs waffling in their
own languages.. It is after all how I learnt French, by immersion.. Stick
yourself in the middle of a language you don’t understand and eventually you
have to listen and hear the words form themselves. It’s a great way to learn,
by hearing that which is around you.
And when I’m the
only person speaking my own language, well as Franklin Jones stated,” at least
by talking to myself, I can count on at least one person listenting.”
