Who is speaking: Who is Listening

Who is speaking: Who is Listening

Once a famous Veena Vadak, was asked to play the instrument in a close gathering of elites, as soon he finished people started showering words of praise upon him. A young lady went near to him and taking his hand, holding in her two hands and thanked him with a very excited voice. She was surprised to hear from the artist “I can’t understand why you all are thanking me, I have just played the instrument, instead of me it is one who listened that is liable and suitable person for your thanks.” The lady was shocked as playing Veena itself is not a joke and impressing the elite was even more though task. She went away with a confused mind, who had listened? Certainly was I, do I thank my self?

This often happens a speaker goes on speaking but who cares about listening? Surely listening is much more difficult than the speaking. Speaking and listening are the ways of communicating with each other and often lack of these creates valley of conflicts and misunderstandings. Just look into our day to day life, at every walk of life, from work place to homes, from school to political fields, and even places related with religious and spiritual activities, voice of complains are generating and becoming stronger and stronger. The probable reason is that every body is with a wish and will of speaking nobody is there for listening. You might have come across in the situation in which you are speaking about one thing, the person in front of you is listening other thing and understanding some thing totally different from what you had said. This is happening because there are many institutions which can train you in the art of speaking but have you ever heard of an institution for training in the art of listening?

Speaking and listening both are acts of human sense organs, in both voice is the most important and integral part but even then both are not the same. Speaking is an active human status while listening is passive posture which requires a lot of patience, calm and open status of mind. Often human beings lacks in holding these there that’s why you will find that we are eager for speaking and most of times try to avoid listening. We love and enjoy giving advice just because we are getting chance of speaking. Speaking is also taken as putting ones thoughts, reasons and forcing others to accept it, to establish our supremacy over others. As this satisfies our ego hence we often hear sentence like “I agree with you but……..” or “frankly speaking your suggestions are too good but……..”

Listening is just not the action of collecting voice by the ears but it is complicated phenomenon in which besides the ears, our mind, wisdom and intelligence are also involved. What we are listening is not depended of the ability of the speakers? Speaker may be of the high quality and expert of the field but from speech we grab only, just what we had listened. When we are listening words are going through the filtration process of our mind, intelligence and wisdom. Mind is valuating these words and our wisdom starts being busy in preparing the answer. Cross your fingers and answer honestly don’t you thinking about your comments on this article, while reading this?

Listening is a magical action and to experience it you need just to observe how the people are speaking. Keep your calm intact and keep on observing you might will be surprised to know that people famous for their love are not only ignoring each other but using others existence for very minute things of life. Now turn to your self for the observation, how are you listening? Surely just this observation will bring a lot of change within you. Start this with your family members and be assured you will find they are more concern and careful about you in compare of the past because listening means the concentration on the thoughts of others. As thoughts are expression of mental energy hence this energy transfer will bring rigid ness and flexibility in your relations and make them more enjoyable. Remember this is the true way of mutual living and life goes like this.