Sally’s comment on my post yesterday raised an important point. The wonderful conversation I had yesterday was not so much characterized by talking, as it was by listening.
It was one of those conversations that consisted of each of us trying to clear our minds entirely of outside thoughts and distractions, listening very intently to what the other person was trying to say next, and then making sure that our own reply was a response to what they had actually said.
This is not something that I can do effortlessly. I need to focus completely to do it properly, and even then I don’t always get it right. But I usually know when I am getting it wrong, because the element of surprise is missing.
To paraphrase Alan Swann: “Talking is easy, listening is hard.” If you are talking to somebody, and you are not at all surprised by what they say in return, then there is a good chance that you haven’t really heard them.
I love that presence of surprise as a “test” for whether you’re listening well!