…lessons would be a waste of money.”
In an episode of F Troop, Sgt. O’Rourke said this to the bugler H. Dobbs. You would then think that Dobbs played the bugle beautifully, thus not needing lessons.
In reality, Dobbs was an awful bugler. His ‘Reveille’, ‘Assembly’ and ‘Retreat’ sounded like off-key notes strung together, and he only occasionally played them well enough to be recognized.
How many times do we accept the ‘positive’ meaning of what we hear, oblivious to all the implications that are involved. We hear what we want to hear, not what the other person wants to tell us.
Sure, we excuse our words by saying “We must be professional, we must be tactful, we must not hurt their feelings, we must be …….”. Yet are we really sparing their feelings and looking out for their best interests? More often, we simply want to extract ourselves from a sticky situation. We don’t want to deal with our own emotions, and we surely don’t want to deal with theirs.
The proper thing to do is to acknowledge their attempts and, if it is really important, be honest with them – conscious of their emotions. And keeping yours in check too.
It isn’t what he said, it’s what we think we heard.
