|
A good listener is not a person who merely keeps quiet. It is one whose eyes are kept on the speaker's face, whose expression registers the emotion proper to what is said. It is one who above all does not fidget with his hands or squirm in his chair or slouch languidly down upon it. It is one who, as the ball of talk is hit back and forth, follows it from speaker to speaker and is ever alert to catch it, without scrambling for it. Swift says that one who talks to please others, not himself, cannot have the twin faults of "impatience to interrupt others" and "uneasiness of being interrupted." Few faults are so noticeable in conversation as that of breaking in on another before he is finished. This fault has already been so lampooned that anyone guilty of it usually belatedly tries to amend matters by saying, "Pardon me, I did not mean to interrupt you before." But in fact he did interrupt. And it was probably because he was more anxious to enjoy his own ideas than to please the company. It is also true that anyone with worth-while ideas will constantly be tempted to break in on another. The better a potential conversationalist you are, the more you need to guard yourself against this urge. |
|||
|
