THE NEW LISTENING

Two ears, one mouth. Yeah, heard it all before. Twice as much listening as talking blah blah blah.

That’s the problem though isn’t it. I really do need to get better at listening. I know I’ve said it before. But it is still true. Only these days it’s true in a different context. The world has changed.

In fact, sometimes, it seems like the whole world (lost in our own digital daydream) has extended that old logic: instead of two ears, one mouth, now it’s two eyes, one brain, ten fingers.

Yeah! Do ten times as much typing as thinking. Don’t bother reading that message! #oldschool. The world’s way too quick for all of that. You know the drift so just comment on what you think they’re saying, yeah? Too long; didn’t read, that’s the zeitgeist. Between the lines? Stuff that. I’ve got a million chat windows flashing. Flipping replied though. And they’d better read it!

As usual, I’m talking mostly about myself again. I’m a terror for not reading things properly. And yet, if more than 50% of my communication happens over the Internet (which sadly might just be true these days) then reading, for me, perhaps for a lot of us, ought to be the new listening.

And there is so much value in slowing it all down! There’s nuance, there’s deliberate phrasing, there’s pacing, there’s heart. Plus you run less of a risk of causing offence by accidentally replying to the surface skim-read instead of the subtlety of what was actually intended.

Yep. I did that. I do that. I will probably do it again, though I sincerely hope not.

But hey, if you skipped down to this paragraph from the top because you got bored at around “digital daydream” and you knew where I was going, that’s alright. Let me summarise: I’m trying to get better at reading, really properly, slowly absorbing, in the same way as a  live conversation ought to grab my fullest and deepest attention. Because although I too have ten quick-fire foolish fingers, I do have one complex brain, two good eyes, and a heart that would rather shun all this tech and meet people face-to-face. And so do you, probably. So between us I think we can do better whenever the reality of all that isn’t possible.

With me?