All yours or all ears?
Once upon a time, two men got down to talk at a bar. They had a lot to catch up on. One of them started telling how this happened and that happened and why this happened and why that happened and when this happened and when that happened… the works. The other guy could barely contribute to this conversation because of its one-sidedness. He tried his best to at least pay attention to what his friend was babbling but he lost interest. You can’t blame him, can you? The distance between the talker and the listener was too big a chasm to be mended. At one point, the latter got up from his seat to visit the loo. He never came back.
The above situation is quite common nowadays. (Nowadays is a safe word as we don’t really know what happened before we began to understand our world.) People want to talk. People don’t want to listen. And more often than not, the people in both these sentences are the same. Having something to say is primal; there’s no antecedent to it. Everybody feels like clearing their heads via their mouths. Nothing extraordinary there either. For aeons, humans have rinsed their desires to communicate louder and better, thus paving way for lingual orchards. What is often taken for granted, though, is the amount of attention expected. For some incongruous reason, we tend to believe that what we’ve got to offer verbally has monumental value. It must be a historic trait of ours. Also, note the way we fool ourselves before trying to fool others in to welcoming our confabulated efforts.
“You won’t believe this!” — the fact that we’ve believed it, before sharing it, already defeats the purpose. Insofar, irony is lost on anybody involved in what follows this sentence.
“It’s just words. No big deal.” — true. What’s also true is our diminishing attention. The spam is rising but our span isn’t. There’s much more to words than what meets the ears. And that’s something we learn when we are one with our silence. Unfortunately, such a phase takes place thanks to our folly or other’s tragedy. Somebody leaves us or dies only to make us acknowledge the significance of a partner in otherwise unrequited conversations. You want to say stuff but there’s nobody to listen anymore. Or at least pretend to listen anymore.
So, what’s the solution to this menace? I don’t know. However, i have a suggestion based on what i practise. Since i’m active in both the online as well as the offline premises, i’ve got an inkling on what could help strike a balance. Of course, this works for me and won’t necessarily work for anybody else. Online, i speak to myself with little to no regards for others. Whatever i write, be it in a tweet or on Facebook or in a blog post like you’re reading, i write to myself. I don’t expect an audience. I just throw it out there like a bottle on the sea. I don’t care who reads it, who gets it, who agrees with it, who disagrees with it, who shares it. That’s none of my concerns. My online presence is a meditative effort at learning about the world with minimum interaction. Offline, i am not only a crazy talker but also an excellent listener. I talk extensively with people i’m most comfortable with viz. wife, amma, brother, etc. At the same time, i listen attentively to whatever anybody in my radar has to say to me, from my friends (the ones who bother to call me) to my colleagues to the Uber/Jugnoo drivers to our maid to everyone i speak with or who speak with me.
A few years ago, i used to be restless with my words. As of today, i don’t donkey the burden of putting myself out there. My notch of explanation has also gone down. Letting things be can be so damn tranquil; my greatest discovery after 25. I genuinely feel it’s only when you listen to others that you grow as a person. One of the reasons why we don’t is because we are scared that the other person won’t listen to us. And that fear is duly contributing to the noise around us. As well as within us.
Since we started with a lame story. Let’s end with one.
Once upon a time, a tongue and a pair of ears got in to a fight. The tongue thought it was outnumbered and will have to continue lashing out to keep even. On the other hand, ears were dumbstruck on how to win this battle. How do you overcome noise with silence? After a while, this fierce match came to a draw. The tongue was far from tiring and the ear brothers were happy ignoring all the moves by the boneless organ. Neither of the two parties had anything to say worthwhile nor had to pretend to listen anything rubbish. Both went on forever till the end of time. The best part of the story being, no loo break happened. Obviously.
