Learning to Listen

Who reading this has been in a conversation with someone who has liked to hear themselves talk more than anyone else?  I know I have and I am sure that most people have run into this situation more than once.   It can be frustrating at times, especially when a conversation is supposed to go both ways, not just one.  At times you may think that if you just listen long enough that they will stop talking, or get their point across, or maybe their tongue will get tired.  Often times however, you wait and wait and wait; and they keep on talking with only a word or two injected into the conversation by yourself.  As annoying as this can be, maybe as the listener in the conversation we should just listen.  After all, we all have two ears and one tongue meaning we should all listen more than we talk.   It is not up to us in the conversation to change how that person is or how they interact with people.  All we have control over is how we react to them.  Maybe they really have something they need to get off their chest and just need someone to listen to them.  Granted, this seems to rarely be the case, but how are we supposed to know.  We do not yet have the ability to telepathically understand what they are going through.  As much we would like to interrupt them, say our piece and move on with our lives, we could gain insight into them and their lives just by putting aside our desire to talk by openly listening. 

When I say we should listen more, I do not mean we should just sit their and let the words flow through our brain with our minds drifting elsewhere knowing that they will never figure out we are not listening.  Part of listening should be our active involvement in seeking to understand them fully, to fully absorb what they are saying and attempt to empathize with them.  This is not always the easiest thing to do.  We all get absorbed in ourselves, desiring only to get our piece injected into the conversation and come out satisfied that we have participated.  To truly empathize with someone, regardless of the content of the conversation, we need to actively put aside our self interest and move past our ego to a place where we can truly be free to listen.  We need to cast aside the notion that society impresses upon us that we are more important than anyone else.  No one is more important than anyone else.  If we consistently buy into society's notion, then we will always stand alone.  We will never truly become part of a broader community, a part of humanity if you will that demands us to become one with others.  To me, one of the ways we can improve ourselves and in kind improve others is to listen. 

If we don't listen and instead pursue our self interest, we may in the short term pull ahead, but down the road we will have pushed others away and end up miserable and lonely.  I believe that we all struggle with this on a certain level.  We all have a part of us that drives us to be that person that talks more than listens, to listen to ourselves rather than listen to others.  I myself struggle with this and don't always succeed in truly listening to others.  I may not interrupt them to get my point across, but I do space out and do not actively listen.  It takes patience and practice to become a true listener, especially in a negative society where we are told we need to succeed at all costs and be concerned only with ourselves.  If we could all just listen a little bit more, we could learn so much and expand our bank of life experiences based upon others and what they have to offer to us.  A part of the problem is the fact that as technology progresses, we are becoming more and more isolated from each other.  Whenever we are out in public it seems that more and more people are focused only on where they are going and actively seek to disregard everything and everyone around them.  It takes effort to interact with others face to face, to listen to someone else's story, to attempt to place ourselves in their shoes and see the world from their eyes.  If we could all learn to do this even once a week, we could have a great impact on those around us, lift up those that need a hand, and offer simply an open ear for someone to talk to.  Today, let us all actively attempt to listen more than we talk and when we do talk, let us not talk about ourselves, but push others to tell us more about themselves.