Listen Carefully!

A little girl was watching TV in her bedroom when her mother called out, “Michelle, come to dinner!” No response. A short time later her mother again called out, “Michelle, come to dinner.” Again, no response. Finally, the mother literally shouted, “Michelle, come to dinner!” Whereupon the little girl came out of her room, ran to the kitchen and with an innocent look on her face said, “Sorry Mom, I didn’t hear you when you called me the first two times.”

In a high school literature class, the teacher called on a day-dreaming student to read aloud a paragraph from an essay. When the reader had finished, the teacher asked him to tell the class what the paragraph he had just read meant to him. The classroom rocked with laughter at his answer: “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t listening.”

One thing is clear about today’s world: there is a serious shortage of good listeners.

We talk too much, most of us — talk, talk, talk.…