Be QUICK to Listen, SLOW to Speak

Be QUICK to Listen, SLOW to Speak

Question:  Have you ever been advised to Be QUICK to Listen, SLOW to Speak ?  I guess, hardly and likely, nary at all.  I DON'T evem remember myself being advised on this at all.  Why?  Probably, it's because many of us are guilty of this [and I'd be the first one to admit that many times in the past, I was guilty of this too].  But then, it's never late for us to RIGHT THE WRONGS.

To take a leaf from james 1:19, Be QUICK to Listen, SLOW to Speak [AND... SLOW TO get angry]. And this truism can't be more valid.  Because, the truth of the matter is that more often than not, we have that propensity to SHOOT FROM THE HIP.  We even tend to speak way ahead of our vocals because instantaneously, we tend to pre-judge or prematurely reach to conclusion bereft of the validated facts and data that need to be pieced together to come up with the complete picture that is neither skewed nor distorted.  Let's look back into our lives and recall those repeated exceptions where we are that guilty akin to having blood in our hands.

At work, have we pre-judged some of our colleagues?  In our relationship with ur partner/spouse, HOW OFTEN were you QUICK to SPEAK yet SLOW to LISTEN? And guess what happened when we pre-judged our colleagues or even our partner/spouse?  And guess what happened next?  Did you SPEAK LOUDLY so cocksure of your raw and premature conclusions?

The mother of all ironies is that often times, communications is ongoing between two parties but what results next is still a gap, a disconnect.  Why?  More often, it is due to the fact that we are NOT actively listening.  We refuse to hear things we DON'T want to hear.  FILTERING intrudes as part of the variables in the equation.  End result?  Both the protagonists will declare "I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU" and the gap that was originally a mile apart exacerbates to become a ten-mile disconnect, no thanks to one or two parties who either wholly or partially shut down his/her eardrums as part of FILTERING.

When things get overblown beyond proportions, what's next?  It becomes a full-blown conflict when it all started off simply as a misunderstanding. If only we are QUICK to Listen and SLOW to Speak, a hell lot of conflicts all around us could have been averted in the first place.  In the end, this becomes an unnecessary problem, a problem of our own making.  If only we are QUICK to Listen, SLOW to Speak ✅✅✅