Not long ago I was on the phone with someone who kept asking me questions and when I would start to answer they would interrupt me mid-sentence and say either, “Really?” or “That’s great.” At some point in the conversation I realized this person wasn’t listening to me or paying attention to what I was saying. I began to get insulted. They would proceed to ask me another question about my life and the same thing would happen – they would cut in when I wasn’t done talking.
Before I go any further let me give you a little bit of background about myself. I am not a long-winded person. I have never been told that I need to talk less and listen more. I was raised to be a rather shy kid, which led me to be an excellent listener, and an even better observer. As I got older the tables definitely started to turn and I began to come more into my own.
I give you this background about myself because after my phone conversation with this person I had an epiphany: In one way or another everyone just wants to be heard. Even me. Someone who can listen to a person talk for hours and not blink an eye. When someone asks me a question I don’t want it to be for conversational sake. I want them to be generally interested in what I have to say.
Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware of tuning people out or not being interested in what they are saying. But usually this entails a conversation between other people, a lecture, or someone who is talking for the sake of talking.
After I got off the phone I realized that the other person probably wanted the same thing – to be heard. Somewhere along the way they had learned it was polite to ask questions because you would get a response and then probably be asked a question in turn. In fact, during this particular conversation I asked this person a couple of questions and it sounded like they really wanted to talk about themselves. I remember thinking, “Geez, you could care less about what I say but you’re awfully interested in what you’re saying!”
This led me to start thinking about selfishness. Was I being selfish because the other person wasn’t listening? Why couldn’t I come to terms that it was more important for this person to talk rather than listen? I think if I would have realized that a little earlier in the conversation then maybe my defenses wouldn’t have gone up so readily and I would have been a little more prepared for being interrupted. But I guess I’m human. I want conversations with friends and loved ones to be two sided some of the time. If you’re not interested in what I have to say then state that up front by telling me you would really like to talk about some things. It’s the expectation of someone listening or wanting to listen that put a damper on that particular conversation.
I’ve either heard or read an article about the art of listening. And it really is an art. Have you ever been so excited about a topic that you stop listening to what the person in front of you is saying because all you can think about is what you’re going to say next? I have. Why don’t they teach listening along with speaking in the classroom?
The whole situation really got me curious about where I’m slacking in my own listening skills. There have been times when I’ve tuned this particular person out while they were talking. What a jerk!
All in all everyone just wants to be heard. They want to matter. To make a difference. Perhaps that is part of the reason I write on this blog.
Domestic Grace 
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