Not Listening

I like to think I speak clearly but increasingly often I notice that when I say 'no ice' in a pub, my drink will be half-filled with ice cubes. The bar staff have only heard the word 'ice'. Similarly if I am in a cafe ordering a hot chocolate and I specify 'no cream', I will often end up with a third of a cup full of disgusting squirty cream with that slight industrial tang. Again the serving staff have only heard the word 'cream'. It is only when establishments don't pollute hot beverages with cream in the first place that I am safe. But it's not just the food industry. Twice recently I have been sold the wrong rail tickets and found that they had either the date or destination wrong on them, despite telling the clerk more than once what the date and destination was. Today I even had a machine sell me a 'single' rail ticket when I wanted a day card to London, so machines are now joining in the non-listening, with the added bonus that machines cannot rectify a mistake!

Of course none of us are infallible and I make my fair share of mistakes. But what I don't do is plug myself into electronic devices 24/7 and ignore real life and real people. This I suspect is at the heart of setting oneself to 'world wash' and only registering the odd word of everything said to one. Information overload and constant multi-tasking between applications, particularly since one device can now perform a multitude of functions simultaneously has got to have an impact. I also don't dare to work in either a bar or a cafe without a natural talent for being able to memorise a dozen orders at once and get them right.

Ideally I would love to be able to boast total recall and am exploring basic meditation techniques to at least improve my retention. I particularly want to be able to remember books in their entirety when I read them. The late comedian Bob Monkhouse had an extraordinary memory. He would remember everyone, their names, where they lived, what they did, what their spouse was called, what the children were called, what the family dog was called and be fit to ask about the whole family and their lives by name even if two or three years had passed since he had last set eyes on that person (and he obviously encountered many thousands of people in his television and public speaking career.)

My partner is currently having a website built where the guy designing it either doesn't read his emails properly or the information about what his clients want just doesn't sink in owing to symptoms of electronic overload. He is undoubtedly a talented web designer who has produced good sites for other people, but the fact he comes back with something even less like what was requested each time is delaying the launch of the website and thus impacting on other things. It better not affect the final cost though, when he could easily have done this fairly straightforward site (graphics provided) in half the time for a client who actually knows his own mind and could have offered a 5-star review to boot. However the stars are diminishing by the delayed week. And this is the second designer. The first company seemed even more unreliable and unaccountable.

Ultimately listening is respect though, People don't respect the person they are talking to if they don't listen to them, let alone if they surf the net, check their texts or emails or phone another friend in their presence - all pretty crass behaviours. It is disturbing how quickly society has forgotten its manners since the advent of the smart phone or claims never to have known about human etiquette in the first place. If I meet or talk to someone. I expect their undivided attention and I give them mine. It is no surprise to me that loneliness and mental health issues have gone up in commensurate measure to the rise of electronic and social media. At the end of the day people need real human contact and to feel loved and valued by real people, people who listen to them and care about understanding them. Electronica can never replace real life, real time, warm human interaction. And it is only with good mental health that people have enough mental resources to care about those other than themselves, electronica aside.