Listening is better done with your ears.

When in my discourses with others I find that it is difficult to answer a question or reply to a comment because the other person has a response formulated before I can scarce begin to speak. This is especially apparent when the subject under discussion is one that the other has particularly strong feelings or views on. On occasion this evolves into such a one-sided conversation that I don't need to say anything more then the periodical acquisition or grunt, because the views and ideas preceding one of my comments have nothing to do with the opinion that I have just put forth. In society this has evolved to such an extent that people are no longer listening with their ears but rather with there mouths. I do not believe that this shift in the amount of respect given to an audience is intentional, but it exists nonetheless. I have thought for quite some time on this issue and have come up with several key factors that contribute to why many people do not truly listen to what others are saying.
The first and most prevalent is that people put more of their thinking into judging what you are saying then just listening to the perspective that you have to put forth. The affect is that instead of being able to carry on a smooth connected conversation the flow becomes choppy and often jumps in many different directions. For example I could be looking at someone and hearing what they are saying but instead of trying to understand the concerns they are expressing I am coming up with a rebuttal to argue my point rather then discuss it. Another element is that sometimes they just don't care what you have to say. This is when they don't think that anything you could possibly say matters or they are just so wrapped up in their own opinion that there hearing becomes clouded. The last cause to consider is that people are often not interested in talking to someone at all. You see this in conversations when the other person is constantly trying to avoid anything that might commit them to continue the discussion because they are preoccupied or they couldn't care less about the topic under consideration.
I hope that we can depart from this style of conversing because it is quite counter-productive and it is the source of almost all of the miscommunications in the everyday relationships that people have. Obviously fixing this problem won't solve the worlds many problems but it would drastically improve the quality of communication that we have.
You have two ears and one mouth, use them accordingly.


Sincerely,
The Composed Cucumber