I heard you!!!

I HEARD YOU!

The other day, I went with my family for a music concert. The hall was not very big, and we had reached pretty much in time. We went in and found one row of empty seats, starting from the aisle. As I was about to sit down on the aisle seat, someone sitting behind pointed out that the seat was broken. Thanking him, I moved further and we settled down.
During the first half of the concert, I diligently took over the duty of the person who had warned me of the broken seat, and everytime someone would start to lower himself or herself on the seat, I would repeat the refrain: “excuse me, the seat is broken”. They would thank me and move on. One gentleman however, took objection to my telling him not to take the seat, presuming that I had reserved the place for someone and glaring at me said: “But there are seats further down the row right? Why can’t you ask them to sit there?” Before I could explain further, he walked away, muttering to himself about uncivilized audience! For a minute I was affronted, then humor took over and I could not help being amused! Well, he actually did not even listen to what I was saying right? He was somehow preprogrammed to the fact that I did not want him to sit there, as I had ‘reserved the seats’.
How often we tend to do this in various other situations too. We foresee an answer to some situation from someone, and we are already framing our response to the situation, without giving a thought to what is being actually being said… In other words, we are not listening; we are only busy preparing our counter to the response. And then it goes on... and the miscommunication then assumes gigantic proportions.
There is this game that I am reminded of, wherein you are supposed to give answer to a series of questions. What makes the game a test on your listening skills is, your answer should be not to the current question, but to the one asked just before. So, you need to listen to this question carefully, in addition to remembering the earlier one, and continue remembering the current one, to which you need to supply the answer once the next question is asked. Try it: it is tough! Simply because our listening skills are poor!
We tend to believe that what we say is what is understood; more often than not, what is understood is not what is conveyed, but what the other person infers the meaning as! If only all of us are able to understand this core message in the art of communication, life would be practically devoid of misunderstandings!