Paying Attention

So... this old gentleman is driving down the highway when suddenly he sees flashing red lights behind him. He pulls his car over to the side of the road and the police officer gets out of his patrol car and walks up to the driver's door. The old guy rolls down his window, the officer sticks his head in and says, "Sir, do you realize your wife fell out of your car a few miles back!?"....
The old man draws a sigh of relief and answers, "Thank the Lord!.... I thought I had gone deaf!"...
Listening..... It seems most of the time our lives are simply filled with "noise".... and we are so easily distracted by it.
My wife said something to me the other day while I was watching a very interesting and totally absorbing television commercial which had talking breakfast cereal. Very stimulating stuff.
After about 3 minutes had gone by I looked at her and said, .... "Did you say something?"...
She gave me a disgusted look and said, "No, I guess I didn't"......
I'm sure this has never happened to you. I felt sort of bad about it for a few seconds and then another commercial came on and it had singing underwear. Being a musician myself, it had my immediate attention.
Listening... paying attention. Sometimes I think it's an art in itself. When I was getting my degree in counseling we had a class in "active listening". We had to pick a partner and have them tell us a story and we had to really listen to them and show them that we were actually listening.
When it was my turn I made up some incredibly crazy story to tell and had my partner rolling on the floor. Yes, I took it all very seriously....
The simple fact is: people are, at heart, conversational and interactive. It's just that we live in a society where there is so much distraction.... television, movies, music, I-pods, texting, cell phones, those Blueberry thingys.... We have come to the conclusion that conversation is no longer a necessity, or at least that it falls far below the necessities for a quality of life. "Hey, how's it goin?", "How ya doin?"... "What's goin' on?"..... Rhetorical questions that don't demand (or want) an answer.
I think it's very telling that a person will actually "pay" someone to simply listen to them. Psychiatrists and psychologists make a pretty decent living just "listening" to people talk about their lives, their hopes and dreams...and problems. If you pay someone to listen to you then you can be pretty sure that they will... hopefully.
It has been said, and I truly believe it, that more than 50% of counseling is simply "listening".
Someone who listens, .. I mean, "really" listens, hears not only what is being said, but they hear what is "not" being said also. They learn to, as it is often quoted, "read between the lines" to find out what the other person is really trying to say,.. or trying to avoid saying, or is totally unaware of what they are really saying.
Listening. Paying attention. It's something we have to cultivate in our lives, to make a concerted effort to train ourselves to do. It's a part of life that we are missing out on every day due to the electronic, fast-paced culture we live in.
Give it a try today. If someone strikes up a conversation, show them you're interested in what they have to say. Maybe even ask them to elaborate on something that you don't quite understand. Try to be "engaged" in the exchange.
Anyway, that's my two-cents for the day. Gotta run. There's this crazy new commercial on t.v. with a giant puppet woman loading a moving van.....