Can you hear me now???

Remember when you met your neighbor at the fence and talked?  And at the end of the conversation both parties went their way smiling and waving and saying "have a nice day"?

Modern technology provides the telephone, voice mail, email, instant messaging, text messaging, etc which has caused relationships to go astray! You cannot interpret the intent of the speaker by a facial expression or an inflection in their tone of voice!

Yesterday I had an unfortunate incident using written words rather than face to face. So much can be lost in the interpretation  (and not in a good way) when you are not speaking directly to someone. The "conversation" went like this:  "I feel like..." but the listener heard (or rather, read) "You are a ...."! Wait! How can that be!?!? I suppose if that person was really paying attention, my feelings would have been acknowledged first and, if not certain of what I was saying, asked me for clarification. I had to wonder if the response and end result would have been the same  in a face to face conversation!

I got to thinking about the fine art of listening. Are we so busy that we don't take the time to listen? Or are we so focused on ourselves that we don't listen? Or do we just not care enough to listen?

When I worked in retail I did an experiment at the check out to see if people really listen. As the customer was leaving I would say something similar in sounding like "have a nice day" and the response was always  "thanks, you too"!  Hmmm. Did they really hear me say "did you see last night's play"???...or, "your face looks like clay" ???

The Bible tells us "...let man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God." (James 1:19)

Perhaps if we just cared enough~ to slow down long enough ~to listen well enough, there would be less misunderstandings!