Not Exactly My Ideal Audience....

         So there's this friend of mine. She's quite the charmer. We've known each other for such a long time that it seems like eons more than it does decades. She's seen it all. The tears I've cried, she's shared, the smiles we've had, she's caused. She's amazing. She inspires me to be a better me. One of the most benevolent creatures I know and yet, nothing in life is quite as it seems. There's this character flaw, that's more of a decision made than it is an alternative forced. She's....not exactly my ideal audience.
        Her name is quite common. It's mother. She can be so indifferent to every and everything said that it makes me (or even you) want to scream. Its like motive to pounce but you can't act on impulse so you rest aside those ill-begotten thoughts and relax. It's the same way that a conversation works. Not every conversation that someone will have will direct a response that is pleasing to the ears. The ideal audience is always going to be one that approves of everything that comes out of your mouth because no one likes being told they're wrong or that they need to change etc. Truth is, it's the hardest thing to find.
       A friend of mine always tells me that it's the people who want the best for us that we want to reject from our lives. The reason we want to reject them is no different from the reason why we would want someone as simple as a mother (parents, in retrospect)  to be removed sometimes from our presence: conflict. They bring conflict about the choice of words spoken, attire, behaviour and everything else that one may find to be irrelevant. But, conflict precedes change. When there is conflict, there's always room for improvement and little by little we approach an equilibrium of character. I guess...sometimes, having an audience that's NOT ideal is beneficial.

"If speaking is silver, then listening is gold." — Turkish Proverb

              I was on the train one day commuting home last week after a long week of hard work, and on the way, I fell asleep. It was supposed to rain that week so the amount of items I carried felt like it overwhelmed me and as I slept, some of them fell. Immediately, I woke up and the lady beside me, who  seeing and recognizing what had happened looked down and watched me pick up the items. I said, "Thank you" being slightly sarcastic and she in reply, "You're welcome", as though she did a random act of kindness. I was shocked by the audacity, she felt as though she accomplished something by watching me pick up my items as opposed to helping me pick them up. What happened to the spirit of brotherly love that thrived??? Has the "cold shoulder" become the common expression of being social?? I'm not sure but what was very peculiar to me was her action.
               She didn't hear what happened, she listened, so much so that she was able to respond. Being a listener does not limit one to thought, speaking alone does that; listening opens up doors of wisdom for those who are willing to take initiative with it, be it helping someone who's dropped something or giving ear to the problem of someone. Listening is and can be as precious as gold for those who value the simplicity of the word.

Who said listening was a matter of orality???

                   This week was what I'd like to call "The Eye Opener". It was my rude awakening about college life. I received my first papers back on the premise that "reaching for the stars to land on the moon" would give me a good outcome. Who says you can't dream? I thought the promise of a B+, at most ,wouldn't be out of reach.
                 When I my paper was given to me, either personally or via email, my expectations were met. I was ecstatic and upon each of my papers was a comment, the part most people overlook because nobody wants to or likes to give ear to bad news. Comments are an overall assessment of your paper, the pros and cons of it, but they tend to be more critical than praiseworthy. For those received via email, I felt as though I was being cyber bullied and those received personally, it was like they had a disgruntled feeling for not having lunch that day and I was the best person to be thrashed. Upon each of my papers was rhetorical brutality that I could not defend myself against because the crime was in the words, my words and how they were used. Rhetorical because professors speak, at least I believe, when they write these words and consider their arrangement. My part, the hardest part, was to be a student accept this mandate they call "constuctive criticism".
                   When I received these words, a piece of pride is bruised at the expense of these words and sadness is the adjacent feeling...so what's next?? To wallow in self pity or to disregard these words because of anger?? I find that the matter is solved when you listen. When I received the syllabus for rach class, it was like a social contract and it, I signed away my own discretion to place my trust in theirs. So what price do I pay when I listen?? Improvement. Success is small steps of progrssion and what better place to start than with education? I can make words on paper be the illustration of a reality I choose when I listen.