Seeking to be Heard

How speaking to one another is not the same as listening or hearing one another.

Two people having known one another for decades, having had millions of conversations with one another. These two people can have truly deep heart-to-heart conversations, only they don’t understand the words that the other is saying. Conversation once a tool for two people to connect and understand one another — now a tool to assume what one is saying.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone, walking away wondering if you even had the same one. The subject is there, the themes are there, yet neither of you can connect in the moment. I’ve listened to others talk about something and when reiterating back to them with the same feeling — it is lost, suddenly what you thought you understood so fully is now something you are second guessing for the fifty-third time what it was that you might have misunderstood. Then when you talk to another person, finding they misunderstood everything you said or you them. It makes me think of the story about the Tower of Babal. A united language each of us speak, can still cause a divide that breaks us.

I think of us as a society, we don’t seek to understand as we once did in the past. There is so much to account for, it isn’t as feasible as it once was.
We exist in a world that you can both be the person who understands what is going on, while also having zero understanding of what is truly going on. We can look at a topic and take an immediate take, if it is positive we will find ourselves digging deeper into the work until we inevitably get bored and stop reading.
Even as I sit here and write I am having to make conscious choices to keep going. We’re conditioned in a lot of ways to expect things to be simple and simplified, if we have to put any additional mental thought into the words coming from us and coming to us, we might short circuit. (enter burnout). We have an influx of information all around us with no training on how to operate in this world.
I’ve had to seek understanding, and it is no different than stalking through the Amazon Rainforest without a machete. Am I seeing and finding new things I’ve never seen before? Yes. Am I seeing anything that I was looking for? I don’t know, I didn’t think I said I wanted fish for dinner.
The tangential thoughts through the mental rainforest are enough to cause any of us to get lost.

It is a dangerous trap to walk down especially without aid. I better understand why humans operate better in pairs or groups. Only, most of our social interactions aren’t even with our partner, roommate, or child anymore. We communicate with co-workers about work. We gripe, joke, and live in a “contained world”. A world we can’t escape anymore, it is everywhere.

Some make peace with it, while others writhe in pain.

I hope my words resonate and reach people, but that even then it isn’t a social interaction. It is a socialization method, only with a screen being the window to one another.
What even is communication in the modern standard? I asked DuckDuckGo a question (modern communication standard in humans) it’s search assist read: “Modern communication among humans primarily involves digital technologies, such as instant messaging, video calls, and social media, which allow for quick and easy interaction. Effective communication today emphasizes clarity, brevity, and the use of informal language to engage audiences better.”
If we have clarity and focus on how to engage others better, why is it the opposite is happening more and more? I realize how much work exists through out all facets of our lives. We strip emotion/humanity from what we write. As we work more and more.
I myself have had to take on a second job I work 3 days a week for 16 hours on top of my 40 hour corporate job. Something so many of you reading can likely relate to.
No wonder we find more and more that we are fatigued. Why do we want to talk when we had to spend 40+ hours with repetitive work where we have to explain that something is an issue before it causes a bigger problem for the company. Then when you start to feel ignored at work after you’ve already shut yourself off at home, how do you feel heard?

When the conversation is cauterized how do we re-open ourselves to connection?
 

A little background on my past (an important aspect we as humans fear sharing). I haven’t had the same mental makeup since I had a small CRT fall on my head one night when I was only 12 or so. That was the first time I recalled a specific head contusion which left a pretty nice knot. Another playing backyard football with friends having another kid run head to head and causing me to flip in the air. I experienced a personality shift from that.
All of this is to highlight why I had interest in the brain, I have felt like nothing made sense my entire adult life practically. I have been on a journey, especially as a writer. I sought to understand why things didn’t make sense. I sought to see and to be seen.