Listening and Hearing
God gave us one mouth and two ears for a reason, is what Mama used to say. And she’s right. Isn’t she always? And the reason God gave us one mouth and two ears is because we need to do a lot more listening than talking. And she’s right about that too. We don’t listen enough to one another.
But in the midst of listening, are we HEARING each other? In the movie White Men Can’t Jump, the main characters have a conversation about the difference between listening and hearing Jimi Hendrix. Click here for the Youtube clip, but I warn you, the language is most definitely not safe for work. The point Wesley Snipes’ character makes is that we can listen and not hear. By “hear”, he means “understand”. He tells Woody Harrelson’s character that he can’t “hear” Jimi Hendrix because he doesn’t get Jimi’s culture. He may like the music but he doesn’t GET IT.
Numerous times in the Bible, Jesus tells his followers, “He who has ears, let him hear.” Now these were people already LISTENING to Jesus, but he was saying that it’s not enough to just listen. We need to HEAR and by “hear”, he meant UNDERSTAND.
One reason our society is in such turmoil is because we don’t HEAR each other. Heck, we barely LISTEN to each other, but even when we do listen, we don’t hear, we don’t understand. I recently got into a conversation with someone and he argued with me about my point. That’s fine, I don’t mind disagreement. But this person was arguing about something I wasn’t even saying. He listened but didn’t HEAR me. He didn’t even understand what I was trying to say. Now as a communicator, maybe that was my fault. Maybe I didn’t communicate clearly. But as an audience, maybe it was his fault. Maybe he listened but didn’t hear or understand. He clearly thought he understood, but he didn’t.
When we engage with others, we need to practice what Mama preached - use our two ears to listen more than we talk. But when we listen, make sure we’re HEARING and UNDERSTANDING what is being said. The greater the understanding, the greater the connection we will have.
