It happens now and then. Encounter a situation when a person seems hard of hearing when fact of the funny matter is, that person’s hearing is one thousand and one per cent excellent.
We regularly come across persons – family members, friends, co-workers – able to hear as normal as can be and listening to you but aren’t really hearing at all. Seems they are saying, “I ain’t ignoring you. I am deaf!”
We marvel how they do it, being experts at it. They keep-nodding- so- you- think- they- understand, but that isn’t the case. We may as well be conversing with a stone.
Have you ever heard it said that the ideal marriage would be between two persons who would not listen to each other?
This situation happens regularly, forcing many to grimace, put their finger into their ear and blurt the oft repeated words, “Apay tuleng ka?” (Are you deaf?). After all, Listening is no hocus-pocus. It’s focus, focus.
How often d’you like to bite your tongue to pieces or punch yourself in the face because your son, daughter, wife, husband, friend, acquaintance or co-worker only understood snippets of your somber conversation, forcing you to wail, “Hoy, ay apoh ka met! Deng-denggem siak?” (Are you listening to me?).
Many a time we hear a father, mother, older brother, sister or teacher sigh in frustration to someone younger they are talking with, “You never listen. You only hear what you want to hear.”
It drives us to posture that yes, without doubt, better to be talking to yourself, since at least, somebody is listening.
Or crooning, “Hallelujah, agbagas ka,” (bear fruit) to your sayote plant. At least, it repays the fruits of your labor by producing succulent sayote which you can or mix with bagoong or aramang.
This condition of not listening happens to Ah Kong regularly, so he visited a doctor last week, complaining his brain is surely addled as he doesn’t listen or is inattentive.
After examination, the doctor soberly said, “Ah, your brain has two parts. The left and the right. Your left brain has nothing right while your right brain has nothing left.”
Fortunately, there are those who lend their ears, adhering to a native American Indian proverb, nearly forgotten with time’s passage, which states, “Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.”
Profound words which mean to calm one’s thoughts in order to pay attention.
In any space of conversation, we deem there must be a degree of silence inhabiting one’s thoughts in conversing with anyone because, silence, after all, remains inescapably a form of speech or expression.
A silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift of the talk and helping the person to be clear, points to you empathizing with another person.
They say silence is golden. No, you counter by saying if speaking is silver, definitely listening is gold.
You are candid with your belief when someone is shooting off one’s mouth in a cacophony of discordant voice, listening is a medium in our culture best underlined as show of restraint to stop unnecessary talk degenerating into an argument.
Keeping in mind not to wrangle into a useless squabble, you answer only when needed, keeping your words soft, sweet, juicy, tender and delectable, just in case you are forced to eat your words later.
You may say that for family members, co-workers and friends to stay together and not have an argument is, for all of us to be hard-of-hearing.
Doggone it; do you know why history repeats itself on wars, altercation at home, separation of spouses, and crimes being committed? No? C’mon now, the reason is that no one listens and hears the first time.
To pay attention to someone talking exhibits a fundamental show of respect regardless of age, but more profoundly, a trait of humility shown towards elders.
Hence, for married couples, sometimes not listening to the other is a signal that by all means, they grow old together by being deaf together.
Listening then, fleshes out two possibilities, the prospect of mooring in another’s mind a seed sprouted in ours and watching it bear fruit of mutual understanding and, prospect of being misunderstood and reduced to a withering weed.
Many will say they have the God-given right to keep yakking and don’t give a damn about listening.
Well, some use language as a mask to create a designed communication that appears to reveal them but doesn’t. We are happy to discover that talking is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
Still, many believe being silent to listen is the fine art of talking.
In the end, many whisper we have one mouth and two ears and we should use them correspondingly. Since the word “listen” contains the same letters in the word “silent.”
