When Silence Becomes Me...

Do you know of a person who always blurts out facts, figures, points, historical tidbits, and statistics to prove his or her point.   In other words, do you know of a smart person who will not allow you or anyone else to forget that they are smart?

I used to be that person.

There were very few conversations in which I would not fail to say such things like, "Did you know that in the 1800's....." and "But the Carpathians didn't do it that way; they....." 

Annoying isn't it!

In the goal of becoming better than I was, I have asked God to remove the need for me to be right, or sound intelligent, or just show off my intelligence.   This time I really meant it.  You know, this time it worked.

The other day I was having dinner and at the table with me were two engineers.   One was a retired structural engineer and the other was a retired nuclear engineer.    At any other time in my life this would have been heaven.  I could have impressed two engineers with my knowledge.   However, this time things were a bit different.   I sat and listened.   Really listened to what they were saying.   All the diatribe that would usually be going through my head and the conversational pauses I would listen for in order to interject my 10 cents of knowledge, I let go by.   I did not have any desire to talk.   No desire to show these heavyweights that there was another intellectual contender.   I was simply interested in what they had to say.

Now this may sound like a small thing to some of you.   To me it is a breakthrough.   I can be a better listener simply because I don't feel like I have to prove anything to myself.   Especially how intelligent or how not intelligent I am.

Trust me.   Some of your comments have made me humble.   There are those of you out there that are truly intelligent.   That give more thought to things than I ever have given.

I hope to be a better listener, and more humble when listening to others.   My goal is to be kind rather than right.