...where I find one little thing, and then connect it to several others. I know, I'm wierd, I got that. Still enjoying such. Anyway:
"Learning the value of silence is learning to listen to, instead of screaming at, reality: opening your mind enough to find what the end of someone else’s sentence sounds like, or listening to a dog until you discover what is needed instead of imposing yourself in the name of training."
So, here are the random things I subsequently thought upon reading that. One, was how in poetry we were taught to really enunciate the end of words, for example, the 'ng' at the end of 'king,' as a method of projecting for a reading. But, it requires that the audience is listening for that, as well. Obliquely like how a person might not even realize their fearful body language is being reflected by a dog being fearful in turn (I was thinking of a lady-friend of Kevin's who Mathilda was completely freaked out by, and the click-point where I realized how she was holding her body - rigid, nervous and throwing out condescending bravado to cover for such - though it also made me think of people reflecting each other in martial arts).
Which connected to something I'd noted in an article about aikido I'd read just before, about sensitivity to the other person's movement, ki, and attack. What was really important in that article, though, was that it emphasized that to really be able to "listen" to the other person, self-control was the priority - any lack of control, of trying to impose yourself on them, completely negates any ability to perceive what you need to. Of course, that discounts the interrupting principle of, say, jeet kune do, but I'll also note that the unlike the softer arts (jujitsu, aikido, etc), jeet kune do's interrupting principles can only really apply externally to social interaction in an argument, and personally I wouldn't even want to conduct an argument that way (what's incredibly effective in fighting I think in that case socially would be just churlish at best, unlike the more adaptive ki-based arts, or suited only to arguing with an irrational person).
That in turn made me think of the idea of that listening to the end of a sentence in social interaction. While interrupting someone's punch, as in JKD, is great because you really don't even want the end of that punch, socially if one interrupts one not only doesn't get to hear the end of the other's thought, one also displays that they blatantly were just not listening, and on top of that focusing just on getting their own thought out. Instead of balance, with both people getting their say and listening to the full thoughts of the other (leading to a richer conversation), the person not-being-listened-to withdraws from the interaction, as, what's the point, except to passively listen? As a sidenote, in the more adaptive arts, one often wants the punch to continue through to its full extension...just not to hit the target - but one still, or rather, especially has to listen for the 'end of the sentence,' there.
Now, I'm speaking purely in the abstract here than to any specific example except that first, and really more to concepts I've been chewing on for years, as interrupting versus adapting is a key concept within martial arts and then yoga in turn (I won't even get into the listening-to-the-self concept here, or how combining them might apply to social interaction). But, of course, if the gentle reader didn't listen to the end of this post, I guess they might miss that (cue me getting smacked upside the head for trying to be self-servingly clever).
