Excellent Listener

Once I met a friend of mine after a long time. The flight was delayed for 2 hours, so I was having my lunch at the Delhi airport when I heard a familiar voice greeting me. I was pleasantly surprised to see my friend Nisha. She was standing along with her husband. I requested them to join me. They ordered some snack and we all got into discussion. I was inquiring about their whereabouts and they wanted to know how I was faring in life. I always knew Nisha to be an extremely talkative and cheerful person, however, her husband was a quiet man. I was meeting him for the first time. When he went to pick the order, I quickly asked Nisha if he was always quiet like this. She said yes and she quickly added that she was extremely happy with him as he was an excellent listener. Out of banter, I commented, “of course, because you talk a lot, you need someone to listen to you the whole day, so I understand your definition of an ‘excellent listener’. Nisha was quick to laugh as well, however, she corrected me saying “Actually, since I talk a lot, I need someone who can listen to the things that I don’t say while I talk. You see, he is excellent in listening to the unspoken words’’.

By this time her husband joined us with the snack. We had a good time together and then our boarding time was announced and we bid each other farewell and went our way.

Looking out of my window, seeing all those cloudlets pass away, I made a mental list of all the people who were excellent listeners in my life. Surprisingly, I found out that most of the people in my list were the ones who made me feel that they were listening to me without me having said anything.

So, yes, Nisha was right. Excellent listeners are masters of listening to the unspoken words.