The Art of "HEARING"

 In the noise we call life, little seems to filter through anymore to the younger generation…some say that we have become clinical or that we have desensitized them due to the extreme amount of everything which is present in their lives, whether it be on TV, Radio, News , Internet or texts and social feeds.

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.”