Listening is an active process, it is not just sitting there thinking about what you are going to say next whilst someone else rambles on. Next time you watch people talking on TV especially political/social opposites. You can almost see the cogs whirring as each party is just catching key words, but not in fact listening to the whole. The sad thing is both people/groups know it is going on and tempers can flair. Listening is not telling other people to listen.
Now being so white that you'll have to wear shades on a sunny day due to glare, I am not going to tell people of color what their lives are like, the only information I have is what they tell me. Do I understand everything, no, because I do not live it everyday, but I do get the picture.
It's the same thing with "mansplaining", please stop, just listen for awhile, oh and by the way, a reply is not always mandatory, or even necessary. A badly thought out reply often leads to both parties being angry and fuller of misunderstanding than before.
In the US [and elsewhere] the art of shouting very loud is a debate tool and often they who shout loudest get the most attention. This can give contradictory signals, just because you got the most attention does not mean that you won the argument. The only result of this type of " I know you are listening because I am shouting louder than you" is that the most essential button on the remote is the mute option.
The interruptions and the non listening on US TV merit a thesis to such a point that no matter what someone says the next question will follow, whether it has any relevance on not. "IT'S ON THE PROMPTER SO I'M ASKING IT" then the guest gets miffed "I ALREADY REPLIED" thereby baffling the interviewer who responds "OH, I SEE YOU DON'T WANT TO ANSWER THE QUESTION!". It's the Jerry Springer school of deliberate misunderstanding and apparently for some reason this is deemed to make popular TV. It also tends just to make people angrier and less likely to listen.
Three quotes, seem to sum it up:
Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
Henri Nouwen
You can't fake listening. It shows.
Raquel Welch
"There is no such thing as the voiceless, only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard" ~Arundhati Roy
It is only by listening can arguments be heard
The more you listen, the more you will know.
It is only by listening can agreements be made.
Without listening all you have is noise.
The other thing is, if you listen long enough you might just find out what is really bugging the other person once the anger has passed and a solution becomes self evident to all.
#Blacklivesmatter, and it should be obvious to everyone, that many feel, and rightly so, that they have not been heard.
Just my ¢2 worth.
DID YOU HEAR ME!!!!!
;-)
Now for some
.