Idea 3: Communication is two way
Conversation in the United States is a competitive exercise in which the first person to draw a breath is declared the listener.
Nathan Miller, US author
We all know conversations like this: two people talking not with each other but at each other. Two monologues, with pauses for breath! Remember Adam and Eve?
Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, neither self-condemning
The English poet John Milton’s evocation of the state of Adam and Eve’s relationship, after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden, neatly captures the barrenness of one-way communication with neither party really listening.
Real communication is very different. It is as if two people are working together in order to clarify, ...
