The sentence that stood out the
most to me with the most intention and purpose was from the Between Speech and Silence reading. Russo claimed, “These transformational moments in my life have mostly occurred when I am
intentional about how much space I take up and how much space I give to
listening; when I stop myself from thinking only about what I have to say, or
assuming that what’s most important in this moment is for me to reveal myself
as knowledgeable.” I chose this sentence because I feel that any person will do
this for their whole life until they become fully aware of what it is they’re
depriving themselves from. If someone is so deeply rooted in a biased and
opinionated attitude, they’ll never be able to learn from what happens in their
life and see what an open mind is capable of.
I feel that I fell victim to this
until very recently. I would argue topics that I knew little about, but because
of my own personal beliefs and evidence I thought I must have been right. It
would cause increasing tension while both sides would become frustrated as each
of us would only focus on trying to get our own points across. There was no
real listening or mindfulness in this argument, just the simple act of hearing
and defensive attitudes. This was not a productive conflict and each of us
walked away with nothing but frustration and anger.
It didn’t take very long into my
first communication class to realize this is not the way I want to go about
living life. I don’t want people to think I’m a frustrating person to have a
conversation with and I don’t want to make myself believe I already know
everything there is to know. I want to listen with curiosity, I want to
understand other point of views, and I want to understand why certain people
think the way they do. I can have my own opinions and I can express those
opinions, but there is no reason everyone in the world has to agree with me.
While doing the string web activity in class, I was able to wait patiently
while everyone got their thoughts out and I was also able to be ok with the
fact that they had differing beliefs from myself. We didn’t need to believe the
same things in order to be productive and understanding as a group, although in
some occasions it may help.
In a blog I found, Quentin Schultze
suggests listening like I child. Everyone can accept the fact that a child
still has a lot to learn in their life and that they want to learn these
things. Children listen with wonder and pure intentions of actually
understanding what it is you’re telling them. If we all listened with the
wonder and curiosity of a child, we might just learn the amazing things the people
around us have to share.
In a quote by Roy T. Bennett he says, ““Listen with
curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with
communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we
listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for
what’s behind the words.” I think this quote sums up my whole point of this
blog. We should listen with curiosity and listen to understand rather than just
reply.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/listening
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