Listen, can you hear the quiet? No?
Between the never quiet workplace, TVs blaring, radios playing, phones ringing, text messages
dinging, road noise, appliances running, dogs barking, cats meowing, clocks ticking,
people talking – and those are just the things that come to mind right now – it
is rarely really quiet. Even when you’re
shopping, people seemingly talk to themselves while walking the aisles so that you turn to them thinking they are talking to you – but no,
there is a plug in their ear that goes to their phone.
When someone is talking to you - whether in person or on the
phone – are you multi-tasking at the same time?
Doing or thinking? Folding
laundry, washing dishes, watching a program on TV? Maybe thinking of what you will say when they
are “done”? Guilty – I am sooooooo
guilty of this. It doesn’t matter if
they can’t SEE us multi-tasking or hear our brains going full speed ahead.
I believe in my heart that the person conversing with us
deserves our full attention – all of it.
If we don’t give our full attention then we also don’t deserve the other
person’s full attention. If we don’t
have time to talk, we shouldn’t make the call or pick up the phone when it
rings. If we only have a certain amount
of time to spend on a call, then we need to find a way to wind it down
gradually – gracefully - when we know we
need to hang up soon.
Now you might think that is a rant about someone who called
me and didn’t give me their full attention
Not so at all. “LISTEN” is my
word for 2013. Once a month I’ll talk
about other kinds of listening, for there are many. And I intend to master all of them this year.
This is a great word for the new year.
ReplyDeleteMine is PATIENCE...I have NONE !! Gotta work on it.
Great post and you are so right. I am guilty of this too. It makes me think that I need to try to be more attentive to those around me as well.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. I am so happy that we live in the fRench countryside, calm and quiet. We have no television, no radio, no portable telephone..... We have our laptops to connect with the world outside but that's all.....
ReplyDeleteJill, it's a GREAT word. Most of my day is spent in quiet...except for sounds of nature and animals. Sometimes, at night, I'll play on the computer and watch television. I think my word is "intentional grace"...yep, two words but necessary, I think.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a year, Jill, for both of us. Tough and necessary.