86. LISTEN AND LEARN

No matter where we go, there are too many wide-open spaces… surrounded by teeth.
 
Listening, not thinking about what we will say, is a lost art. Talking, on the other hand, too commonly reveals a mind that has not had sufficient input. Abraham Lincoln once remarked, "He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." Socrates, wise to the waste of time the mouth causes in the learning process, would make students wait three years before they could even ask a question.
 
There is no learning when the mouth is engaged. "Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf." (Cherokee proverb). Learning by listening provides the necessary fuel for good colloquy. Unfortunately, people are like barrels in that the less they have in them the more noise they make. A mind enriched with experience, listening, and learning has some hope of creating words of interest to others. Even then we must be ever mindful of how dangerous a little bit of knowledge is—and what we have is always a little bit compared to what there is. Otherwise we risk being as edifying to our listener as a leaky faucet dripping into a tin dishpan at the head of the bed when they want to go to sleep.
 
Talking strokes ego and satisfies insecurities. We come back to that basic human problem of thinking the universe circles around us. We may think the world is our vast lecture platform to affirm our importance, but we are usually the only audience that is impressed.