____T.H.E. .P.A.S.S.

____Listen

Everyone loves a conspiracy. It gives them a topic to talk about. But there are those who just love a conspiracy so that they just display their strong opposing viewpoints just to show that they are "stronger?". I don't know if the right word is used here, but I'm sure all of you have met such people sometime in your lives. Recall how often have you proposed an idea, philosophy and you think it is pretty good, innovative and felt that it was thinking out of the box. Then some narrowminded idiot immediately puts you off by claiming that your idea is totally crap - even though he hasn't even given you a chance to explain what you felt.

I would say give everyone a chance to say what they want to say. I don't mean by just letting them rattle on and on. But everyone should show genuine interest in listening. (And I don't mean looking genuinely interested... There's a difference.) How often do people actually listen nowadays?

In Straits Times under the section "YOUTHink" yesterday, there was this girl who wrote about her decision to go to an ITE after completing her O levels. It wasn't because she did not do well enough for a place in a polytechnic but maybe she felt that she needed more time before moving on. She's now a graduate of a certain polytechnic but she recalls the taunts, jibes and shocked looks of the people around when she told them about her decision then.

It wasn't a case where she didn't have a plan. Because if she didn't have a plan, she would have deserved some of the taunts. But her plan was to complete her studying in polytechnic, which she has done so, then move on to finding a job. After a few years of working experience, she felt that maybe by then, she would be wiser than most people to decide what course she would want to do a degree in.

Breaking away from the norm is always a hard choice to make. But how many of us now regret our decision to study in our current field of specialisation? Have we all asked ourselves "hey, maybe bio science is not for me."? The society should give a chance to those who have chosen to break away from the norm. We should always listen to them and not despise them because learning is all-rounded and we do not do all our learning in school. Sometimes we can learn subconsciously from what people are saying.

I feel that the first step to an open-minded conversation that this enriching and educational is to open up ourselves. By accepting that others have their things to say, we can actually think about what they have said. Because if you have already rejected their ideas, there would be nothing to think about anyway. And only by thinking, would the conversation be enriching and fulfilling.

Listening can only be cultivated from young. Afterall, as the saying goes, "human achievements are 30% nature and 70% nurture". Parents should learn to listen their kids from the time they come into existence. This is because children tend to look upon their parents as role models, especially from a tender age of 3 to just before they go to school at maybe around 7. And because children communicate to some extent as such an early age, it is important for parents to start developing their kids' listening skills. I always see this kitchen scene -

"Mummy, look! I drew a car!"
"Nice. Now go play with your brother, can't you see I'm cooking?" Mum replied, waving her hand dismissively.

Cooking still has to go on but there is probably a better way to tell your child not to disturb you. Parents tend to be too dismissive and discourage conversations with their children because they use words like "don't", "must", "should". A better way to "chase" your child to away is to encourage him/her to do something else, such as "Nice car, maybe if you colour it red, it would look even nicer."

This dismissive attitude towards their children and poor listening skills tend to become a habit and soon, parents will start to complain about their kids being rebellious. This probably is because their children have learnt from their parents and developed such poor listening skills that they do not heed to their parents' concerns. Many of us have lesser or little conversations with our parents nowadays because we find that they do not answer directly to our questions, conversations tend to change topic too readily and also they do not listen to us enough. Our parents have developed a habit to dismiss us immediately and listen poorly to our ideas but this does not mean that they are old and daft. Instead, we should think about ourselves too because we probably will become like them in the future and have problems with our children - it is very much a vicious cycle, because this dismissive attitude and poor listening skills will be passed down to future generations.

Slowly, the society will learn to listen but we're still far from the ideal. Many of us still have to break away from the norm and develop our own thinking and ideas. We cannot be just agreeing with just any idea because by agreeing to all ideas, we will soon find that we are just contradicting ourselves. Listening is one of the ways to go forward and be radical because thinking can only be generated after absorption of ideas.

If you've made this far into this radical idea I've wrote, congratulations. You've learnt to absorb knowledge and listen to what I have to say. Now go forth, spread the word and educate the people around you. Everyone should learn how to listen.

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