Tell Me More/ Jungtzu Lin

Conversation is just like playing catch.
We cannot play catch without receiving a ball from a partner. When we are absent in mind, we will miss a ball. Likewise we cannot communicate and understand each other without listening eagerly.

However, it is true that to be an effective listener is very difficult. In general, Japanese tend to keep quiet when somebody is talking and let him or her express thought, but it does not mean that we are effective listeners. Being quiet and passive is totally different from really listening. Sometimes it shows that we are not listening but bored. I think that many people have experiences that apathetic or critic listeners made them lose will to talk. As Brenda Ueland pointed out in her essay, effective listening is “the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role.”