Listening

Its not easy is it? Why do we always fake like we are listening but really we are just waiting for our turn to talk? We are waiting for that split second when we can slip our opinion in.

For awhile I felt like I had overcome this desire. I was never quick to speak when listening to all the people I have met since I have been gone. I almost enjoyed just listening and trying to hear out their ideas and perspectives and see where they are coming from. I had completely abandoned the basic human drive to get my two cents in. And I was learning that what I thought to be "right" is only based on my experience. So the more I listened, the more I understood the reasons why people who were different from me believed what they were saying to be "right", just like myself.

But like most things, when we take two steps forward, we are usually blind to the one step we are taking back. I realized this when my friends arrived in Bangkok.

A group of my best friends are here to visit me for a month. The particular friends are a group of amazing people and we always tend to turn a conversation about spicy sauce or something trival into a conversation about theology or polotics. We have always dont this and always will. I beleive this is why we are such good friends.

As we started to have these conversations I started to see how I was slipping back into the old me, the one who usually wasnt listening and was just waiting for his turn to speak. And I started to ask myself why this was happening. Why, when I was with people so close to me, people who support and enbrace my openmind, did I begin to regress?

I dont know if the motive was of open self willed pride or subconscience pride, but after thinking about it for while I came to this conclusion:

For some reason I had began to think that my experience outwieghed their experience. And because of that prideful state of mind I stopped listening so much becuase I subconciencely believed that what they were staying didnt mean as much as what I had said or was going to say. I think it was easier to do this with friends because when we know someone's experiences we always attribute their opinion to those experiences. But with a stranger, like the people I meet, we dont know much about their experiences so we have a more unbias take on what they are saying. We cant say they think "this" because they have seen "that." But with friends its much easier to do. We know both the "this" and "that" of our closer friends so we always tend to try to put the two together.

Though I obviously believe that experiences play a massive role in our opinions and thoughts, more or less experience doesnt always warrent more or less knowledge. Myself being the case and point.

There's not much of a point to this whole thing, no good punch like or closing statement. I just wanted to write it down. I think its good to look at who we are and realize that as we strive forward in our minds we can never forget that we are always on a slippery slope. I tend to think of progess as leaps and bounds but really its more like crawling. Speaking with my friends and realized the underlying pride in my speech with them reminded me of this.