How can several people hear an orchestra playing and only one of those people have heard any violins? On the other hand, I never heard the French horns and they did.
Is this because there is a huge disconnect between what we do when we are listening to someone as compared to hearing them? What the heck does that mean, anyway? Don’t we hear what we listen to? Yes we do, and that may be the problem. Huh?
Is this, perhaps, the same way we interact with life? Concentrating on the whole orchestra may give us a sort of unity, every instrument blending in to give us a sound that represents them all. Perhaps a new sound, unidentifiable as any individual instrument? Does it make a difference if we are familiar with the tune being played?
And does it really matter, as long as we are enjoying the whole of the music? Or are we just putting up with the sounds? If it is a familiar tune, cannot we just turn the sound down a bit so it is in the background?
When we are with family and friends, do we hear the conversation as ‘general noise of the orchestra’ that we identify as ‘that’s them and we all know what they will say’? Heard it before? Seems that we adapt to the ‘murmur of our families’ instead of hearing the violins and French horns.
We might specify or direct our listening by adjusting our awareness to zero in on those individuals. It’s not that simple, however.
Isn’t that ‘murmur of the crowd’ just the replaying of the conversation of society, doing its endless job of keeping us safe, keeping us thinking of another ‘same old’ yesterday? Want to feel safe another day? Me, too. Then do what you did yesterday, if it was successful! (Kept you safe even if it wasn’t what lit up your life.)
I’ve heard it said that ‘We learn to adapt to the nuances and therefore we rationalize our life. We build our lives around cause and effect.’
We hear what we hear because it reminds us of something else.
We influence what we observe, says quantum physics. If that is the case, then what we observe influences us as well and somewhere in there we lose any alternatives.
Each of us is born with a gift that we are inherently yearning to share with the universe. This is the individual lens of our ‘true character’ that we express so it is through this perspective that we will observe others, listening to and hearing them.
Just knowing that this is the case will matter a lot. This is why we hear our friends and families the way we do. My way of putting it down on this page may seem a bit complicated but life is interesting that way. It may require us to investigate more deeply. And it matters a lot if we do.
Rich