耳をすませば

Alice: Oh, but that's nonsense. Flowers can't talk.
The Rose: But of course we can talk, my dear.
The Orchid: If there's anyone around worth talking to.

Growing up as someone who's often been told that I'm too quiet or keeping everything inside, in my late teens I realized something: most people don't really listen. Listening is different than hearing, which in my personal opinion is a very fortunate skill to have. You don't even need to have ears to listen, especially in this day and age where everything can be conveyed through the tip of your fingers.

I grew up in a household where there were two narcissistic adults—one was more than the other
—who talked a lot with loud, striking voices, so I was used to feeling tuned out. They did listen sometimes though, but mostly they listened to reply. When they were blaming someone else for something bad that happened, when they needed their insights to be forced unto their kids, when they needed to vent. Sometimes for reasons that are seemingly good but actually not really: to seek for solutions, especially if I talked to them about my problems, even when I didn't ask for them to resolve my issues for me. When I think about it again, people who fall into the latter description don't actually trying to help others: they're trying to help themselves. It's probably an ego-filled desire, to satisfy some kind of need to be needed.

Anyway.

The older I get, the easier it gets for me to distinguish people's intention in listening
—not only to me, but when I listen to other people converse as well. Note that "listening" doesn't always require your ears, but also your eyes and brains, like when you scroll through Twitter.

The most common example that I found is people listen to compare their own experience or insights with their opposite. Things as simple as, "I like this song!" when a mainstream pop song plays on the radio, where the opposite replies with, "really? I hate this song so much".

Sometimes it's just trivial stuff, but other times it can be more destructive. I'm sure we all know how it feels when we share our distress to a friend and they thoughtlessly interrupt with, "omg I know how you feel, once I blah blah blah" and they go on about their "similar" experience, even though you haven't finished your story. Or worse, they would reply with "it's just a simple matter, I've been through a lot worse". Then you feel annoyed or disheartened that you don't even bother to continue.

Long ago I stumbled across a quote that said, "the reason we have two ears and just one mouth is so we could listen more and talk less". I might seem quiet for most people, but to people who I consider close to me know how talkative I can be when I want to. It's just that I filter the people who I think are worthy to talk to.