The Genuine Art of Listening

As much as it is important that we are well-versed and adept at making conversation --- communicating with other people --- almost as crucial is our ability to listen.

Listening is another one of those things we are quick to relegate to the sidelines and forget when we go about our everyday routine. Almost always, one is ready to reason out that it is, after all, an indispensable part of our daily rituals. How is it possible that we don't know how to do it?

One can understand the logic behind such statement. Unfortunately, the person saying that is missing a very important distinction between listening, and that other thing we are actually often guilty of: simply hearing.

These are two very different things. Listening presupposes a genuine interest on the other person's words --- sincere expressions of his or her thoughts. It requires a great deal of concentration and demands a considerable bulk of our attention, to say the least. Merely hearing another out, on the other hand, is quite another entity of its own. It doesn't matter whether we understand the other person talking; or whether we have any hint of curiosity as to what he or she is saying. Heck, it might not even be a person that we are paying attention to! As long as we appear to be engrossed in some sound we've just caught a bit of, hearing it arguably already is.

This distinction is not without its purpose. In fact, it goes on to show just how much more valuable a person's listening skill is, compared to his ability to simply hear things. A person who knows how to listen, is just appreciated that much more by others. After all, he's the one who appears to be sincerely interested in what they are trying to communicate. Who wouldn't want to have someone like that around, right?

And so, the next time you find yourself having nothing decent to do, try honing that much-neglected talent. Listen as an acquaintance shares a story. Listen as a colleague tells a problem. Not only could you learn something from it. You just might have earned yourself a friend in the process. And that's never a bad thing.