Are we really listening, or just waiting to speak?

We can hear every word someone says and still fail to understand them. In his column 'From the Silence Within', Santosh Nair reflects on listening, communication, assumptions and what it means to be genuinely present when another person speaks.

A little boy was trying to tell his father something important. The father was sitting on the sofa, looking at his phone. “Papa, listen,” the child said. “Yes, I am listening,” the father replied without looking up. The boy began speaking, stopped halfway and quietly walked away. A few minutes later, the father realised that the child had disappeared. He called him back and asked what he wanted to say. The boy shook his head. “Nothing, Papa. You were listening, but you were not there.” It was a small moment, the kind that happens in thousands of homes every day. Yet it raises a question that many of us may spend our entire lives avoiding. How is it possible to hear every word someone says and still fail to understand them?

Read more: When the Book Says One Thing and Your Eyes See Another

Have we become better at sending messages than receiving people?

We have learned to communicate across oceans but sometimes struggle to communicate across a dining table. A message can travel from one continent to another in a second, yet a simple feeling may take years to reach someone sitting beside us. There was a time when people waited for letters. They read them carefully, sometimes more than once, trying to understand not only the words but the feelings behind them. Today, we can send hundreds of messages without having a single meaningful conversation. A birthday wish arrives automatically. An apology comes through a short message. An employee requests leave on WhatsApp. A family discussion ends with an emoji. Technology has made communication faster, easier and more convenient. But has it made us more understanding? Perhaps we have become so good at sending messages that we have forgotten what it means to receive another human being.

Long before human beings learned to write, they communicated through pictures, movements, sounds and expressions. A raised hand could warn someone of danger. A smile........

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