Learn to Listen

Even a deaf man can learn to listen. Though we hear with our ears understanding comes from the heart and from the mind. So many problems in the world and in our own individual lives could be solved just by listening. It is not so much that the most intelligent of the world are any smarter than the least educated. The difference is just by way of how one listens over the other. If I tell a child to wash the dishes I do not need that child to respond that there are only few dishes in the sink. This is an example of poor listening skills. I did not ask the child if the sink was half empty or if it was half full, I asked the child to wash the dishes that were there. It seems simple enough, but this cycle is repeated throughout our lives in so many ways and we are often like this child. Learn to listen, not with the intent to reply but with the intent to understand. You see I cannot give you a proper response on a good meal until after I have digested it. I have to take the food in first, taste it, swallow it and then digest it. Now, in these stages I have choices. I can talk with my mouth full so that you do not understand what I speak. I can taste the food and declare it right even though I have not swallowed it. And I can assume it has a healthy effect on my body though my body has not yet digested it. Too often we do this with information in our lives. We reply to situations or to people even though we have not fully digested the information. The funny thing is that most people you talk to are never really listening to what you’re saying because they already have a response waiting on the tongue. They are just waiting for you to stop talking. They do not listen. They do not hear. You have to understand, as you navigate your life, that you cannot have a healthy relationship with people who do not listen. It won’t work. Some of you are in relationships with people and its not working. The reason its not working is because your in relationships with people who do not listen. For many of us the result is that we learn to do likewise. We do not stop to hear what is heard. We do not stop to listen.