Time and Attention
In every interaction, there is a self, and there is another.
Each thinks, each feels, each sees.
What they think, feel and see is not necessarily the same. It cannot be.
The one who speaks, seeks two things from the other:
1. Time
- Whereby the other’s time stands still, and ‘wholly belongs’ to the one who speaks.
2. Attention
- Whereby the other’s attention is undivided, and ‘wholly belongs’ to the one who speaks.
To ‘wholly belong’, means to pause one’s own thoughts, feelings and ways of seeing, and to just LISTEN.
This is easier said than done.
Giving Time…
One’s thoughts, feelings, and ways of seeing occur as ever-present flows acting within one’s inner realm, emanating upon one’s outer realm.
When we quieten our inner flows, we make room for another.
We allow the other’s thoughts, feelings and ways of seeing to flow through us.
In a way, their flows become ours.
We try not to interrupt the other’s flows with our own.
There will come a suitable ‘time’ to express our own flows.
For now, this is the other’s ‘time’ to express.
So, we give our ‘time’ to the other.
During this time, we try to not get distracted.
We try to remain present for the other, in the here and now.
We just listen.
Giving Attention…
Undivided attention means we don’t want to miss a thing being said.
We are wholly focused on the other.
We are not focused on ourselves, or something else.
We are not drifting into the abyss, or thinking of what to say next.
We try not to permit our own flows to distract and divide our attention.
We try to absorb everything being said.
Everything needs to be heard. Everything is important.
This includes the other’s spoken words, their gestures, their emotions, all that is consciously expressed, all that is unspoken, and all that stirs in their unconscious realm.
The one who listens must give importance to the one who speaks.
This is the listener’s duty.
Next time you interact with someone, give your ‘time’ and give your undivided ‘attention’ to them.
They will appreciate it.
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Comments
To maintain one’s undivided attention for other than short communication is not easy. What you are hearing can trigger other diversionary thoughts of your own.
I suppose the discipline required is to engage fully in your reaction be it verbal or visual and body language.
All easier said than done.
Whilst considering concentration we learn this from our schooldays .
On a lighter note I reminisce being subjected to long sermons at my English boarding school . To listen to to seemingly endless droning of an elderly cleric required some sort of mental escape. Watching the chapel windows dripping with cold rain on a dark English gloom I had my own escape.
That was to imagine sailing on a yacht in bright sunshine in the South Pacific.