We always get a question about the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is Passive and Listening is Active! You might want to know “How?”
Firstly, we should know what a Word is.
The definition of a word is a letter or group of letters that has meaning when spoken or written.
No, I am not talking about the basic definition of it but a scientific or logical meaning of it.
We have roughly 6,500 languages around the world. The counting only includes human languages. There are sounds like the chirping of birds, thundering of clouds, whirling of wind and many more. We can hear all those sounds which don't come under the definition of a word.
The animals or birds, they do talk to each other, they don’t talk nonsense! Only because we don’t know their language or we can’t understand what they are speaking about.
We don’t know many of the languages out of 6,500 languages but that is not counted as “some sound”. Though the words from those languages don't mean anything when spoken or written to most of the human population. Still those come under the basic definition of a word.
I am a little confused now! Again, what is a word?
There are various vibrations or waves flowing in our surroundings but all that flows are not perceived by us. Our senses, like ears, nose, tongue are always open to sense. Whenever there is an odour, we smell it and similarly, we taste anything that touches our tongue. Likely, if there is a sound nearby, we “hear” it, irrespective of either we notice it or not. That sound can be considered as any wave, word or vibration.
Now you might get my point. Hearing is Passive, you don’t need to notice every sound until it is an alarm or important to you.
Have you ever noticed the chirping of crickets at night? That sound is out there in the day as well but we don’t listen to it or sometimes at night as well, when you are completely into your own work, you don’t listen to that sound because of neglecting it. But there might be a person who is struggling to sleep and being disturbed by the same quirky noise.
That is all about hearing. We hear every bit of sound, vibration, word or wave (whatever you want to call it) which is out there in our surroundings and to which our ears are capable of hearing. But “listening” is Active as it needs our attention to understand and our brain interprets those sounds.
Listening is a big task which needs concentration. Any sound that enters our ear, when we try to concentrate on it and interpret correctly, that is a good listener’s prowess.
We need to learn and develop a skill of listening to acknowledge our own world. Being an active listener is always counted as a great competency in all the industry or business. If you are hearing what others say and not assess it, you are at a loss.
What is your best skill to deal with the current high tech world? Share & Stay tuned!
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