Listening is not something I'm great at. I'm far too prone to talking. Maybe it's just that I get anxious when I'm waiting for someone else to speak. So I end up running the conversation, and probably boring whoever I'm talking to.
Still, at least that's communication. I was sitting outside my church waiting for praise band to start the other day, and people were going in and out of the fitness center next door. One or two of them were sporting iPods with headphones as they walked to their cars. I just thought, is this what we've come to? We can shut out the world around us, and fill our silences with sound. I mean, I love music and it's wonderful, but maybe being shut up in our iPods isn't the greatest way to live. A thought popped into my head as I watched a girl get in her car, still wearing the headphones. "No one's listening to each other and we're ruining the planet." I don't know that I meant it as an environmental thing. Maybe I just meant it spiritually: we can't hear anything now, except what we want to hear, a soundtrack (a prison?) of our own making, and no one notices the world - environmental, economic, social, spiritual - withering and dying.
I suppose if I want to "walk the walk," maybe I better try listening more myself. I could start by not sitting at work with my headphones on all day. But with everyone else listening to music, who would I talk to? Would I just replace music with random office noises? In a weird way, I think it might make me feel stir crazy. Music is a good calming, distracting agent.
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