As I sat in the HUB in between classes frantically trying to crank out a pathetically last minute assignment for my next class, a boisterous group of friends sucked my attention away from my work and into their conversation. Well, if you want to call it a conversation. Now, let me preface by saying this was no extraordinary group of friends. No glamorous Gossip Girls, no wacky Ross and Joey, they weren’t even comically dressed in too much Gator gear. They were your average group of college students sitting around and talking. And when I say talking, I mean everyone was talking and not one person was listening (well, except for me).
First girl: “I took eight shots of vodka and then threw up on her feet in the car. It was so embarrassing.”
Next guy: “Yeah, well when I was in Barcelona I drank too many Bloody Mary’s and threw up over the railing of our hotel.”
Next guy: “I’m planning on getting shit faced tonight. I honestly give zero fucks.”
Next girl: “I’m going to be studying. I have so much homework and my exam is Wednesday and I’m all out of Adderall. I’m like freaking out.”
Next guy: “I’m thinking about faking the symptoms to get a prescription. That’d be so tight. It can’t be that hard to do.”
In my efforts to keep your IQ from dropping anymore, I’ll spare you the details of the next 23 minutes of their conversation, because frankly, it sounded a lot like the first 2 minutes. It was an endless, chattering cycle of each person spitting out any useless information about themselves that came to mind.
Have you ever met someone that is never listening, but merely waiting for their turn to speak?
Well then, you’ve met a startling number of people of my age. I can’t be sure if it’s one of those gosh darn Millennial things, if it’s something people grow out of (fingers crossed), or if everyone simply stood to close to the speakers at their last trap show, but the epidemic of Van Goghs walking around merely flapping their gums is enough to raise concern (He cut off his ear. Get it?).
Our inability to really listen transcends to the digital world as well. Countless group texts get ignored, even when one of your closest friends hand crafts the message. Although some could argue that’s due to the bystander effect, I believe it to be something more alarming. We are not only losing the ability to tune into the people communicating with us and tune out of our narcissistic wishing wells, but we are also losing the ability to speak with conviction as well. We filter through so much useless information on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis, that when little gems of value present themselves, we are incapable of giving them the attention they deserve.
There are three parts to communication, as you may have scribbled down on a notepad in a Gen ed class your freshman year: The sender, the message and the receiver.
I implore you to ask yourself if the communication in your life is the satisfying kind? The kind that helps you not only send powerful ideas of your own, but also receive ideas back? Are the messages and words whizzing between you and your peers ones of meaning and insight, or do they merely fill the air for a brief moment and then fizzle out in time for the next useless anecdote to be spit out? There is no shame in hungover stories and valueless small talk when your brain is too fried for anything else, but be careful that you haven’t lost your value as a sender in this world. Birds chirp to each other, bats echolocate and humans speak translatable language. I would hope our form of communication hasn’t become the most disgraced in the animal kingdom.
Test it out and tally up how many meaningful conversations you have each day. And by meaningful, I don’t mean they have to revolve around world hunger or violence in Syria, they just have to involve truly learning something about the person speaking, thinking of something in a new way, or conveying a message that is worth carrying with you to your next class.
We listen to people at a rate of 125-250 words per minute, but think at 1,000-3,000 words per minute. Are you using those thousands of words to create strings of trash or threads of insight in your mind? Speak with conviction and listen for the sake of understanding, not for the sake of responding. Look up from your glowing screens and look into people’s glowing eyes and you might be surprised what you gain.
“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk,” Doug Larson once said.
Hearing is easy, listening is hard. Don’t let dumb words fall on deaf ears.
Featured photo courtesy of: Cogent.co.uk
