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Wednesday, June 08, 2016

DENNIS PATRICK: LEARN TO LISTEN – LISTEN TO LEARN

A father exhorts his son, “Hush! Just listen!” A wise man, this father. He coaxed his son to listen to the conversation around them in a restaurant.

This is a firm admonition, true enough. The father encouraged his son to listen to others that he might learn something about himself. Because we are alike in so many ways the father was trying to teach his son to see himself in others. Like the exhortation “Stop - Look - Listen” it is surprising how life’s early lessons stick with us.

Father knows best, so the saying goes. In the years following the tutorial the son indeed began to see himself portrayed in others. It is curious how people are so much alike. If we would learn something about ourselves, take time to listen to others. Stop talking. Start listening. Shift the focus off ourselves.

No lectures are warranted. Taking time to eavesdrop, to kibitz, to listen in on others’ conversations becomes personally instructive. It’s neither illegal nor immoral as long as the eavesdropping is done in public.

And where is the best place to overhear conversations? Wherever people congregate is as good as any, be it stores, banks or on the street.

The post office is a favorite meeting spot in small towns. In towns where mail is not delivered people gather on schedule at the post office to pick up mail and conversational tidbits. It is stunning the bits of conversation transacted in a few moments.

Another probable spot is the coffee shop or cafe. A small town reporter could frequent the cafe at 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. each day and collect all the news that’s fit to print, and a lot more besides.

Often the content of idle conversations is little more than gossip. Could it be that we are all prone to gossip to one extent or another? Gossip, after all, is the spreading of unsubstantiated information about a person, place or thing usually particulars of an intimate or private nature.

Why all the idle conversation bordering on gossip? The person who exudes information commands power. The very appearance of holding inside information is enough to create the illusion of dominance.

So much for the content. By its very structure conversation presents a window on how a person thinks. That which issues from the mouth is a good illustration of what goes on inside the heart and head.

If we had to read our conversations in print in the same form as we spoke them in dialog, it is a wonder we ever communicated. Could we make heads or tails of our discussions at all?

An experiment illustrates this point. Record a conversation between two or more people. Observe how often sentences are left unfinished, how often one person interrupts another or talks over them. It is as if fresh thoughts tumbled over each other before the first one is even declared. So we interrupt ourselves, or others, to hurry along this new thought. Occasionally we return to the first thought. More often, however, we consider our thoughts more important than the contribution of others. We are such egotists. No wonder there is so much miscommunication between people. Conversations are seldom the stuff of profound reasoning.

Here is another observation. We would much rather talk about another person than ourselves. Or, we would much rather talk about ourselves in the distant past, especially if we show ourselves in a favorable light. The last thing we want is to tell the obvious truth about ourselves in the here and now. It is too risky for our egocentric hearts to bear.

A malignant hunchbacked dwarf, Alexander Pope (1688-1744) listened, observed and published his impressions in his pithy “Essay on Man.” It reads in part:

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,

 The proper study of mankind is man....“

Created half to rise and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!”

It took years to sink in, but now I understand what my father was trying to teach me. “Know thyself.”

 

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

 

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