calumniate verb, to make false and malicious statements about; slander
It has been a long while since I have written here. A year to be exact. It's time to return to this practice of writing again.So calumniate. A fitting word for the current politics of our time. It would be easy to write something about Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, but how boring would that be? You can just go watch the media outlet of your choice for an update on that.
I am at home again taking care of a baby and not working full time. The one thing I notice most about my days here in the house is the silence. It is often pierced by the screaming of a baby or my 4 year old, but there are times when it is deadly silent. I often find myself turning on the radio or tv just for sound. If you were to walk into my home in the middle of the day, you would hear something different in each room. It's a mechanism I use to calm myself and actually helps me focus. Something to listen to instead of my own head, which will always get me into trouble. This being the case, I find myself listening to snippets of conversations, sometimes not knowing what came before or what they are even about. I feel like one focusses on what is being said right at that moment more then when you have been following a conversation. I also find this way of isolating conversation can cause you to judge someone more harshly or form a stronger opinion based on the small amount that was heard. Sometimes I form an opinion because I recognize the voice as someone I do not like or vice versa just because I am not concentrating on the plot line they are discussing. I'd never really thought about these things until I started avoiding silence.
This habit of listening to partial conversations is not unlike how we all go through life. In the office or out and about. I rarely listen to someone 100% when they are telling a story or explaining something. I usually zone out and concentrate on where my eyes are looking so they can't catch onto the fact that I am not listening at all. If I had to calculate it, I'd say I probably listen 30 to 40% of what most people have to say. I probably shouldn't admit that…I am guessing the higher percentage you listen is proportional to how much of a caring person you are. I will refrain from judging myself in this way for now.
I wonder what the impact is of the 60 to 70% I have missed. If other people are doing this the way I am, I wonder how much we are all missing. If we honestly don't know those other pieces, it is easier for us to be mean, to calumniate others - because we honestly missed the parts that might have explained the sentences that we just heard. There might have been some vital information in there that we passed over. The few words that would have completely changed our opinion.
Case in point, arguing with my husband. When I am arguing, I probably only hear about 20% of what the other person is saying because I am listening to my head, which is behind the steering wheel and heading us straight into a long, convoluted argument about something trivial. Often times after the argument, when things are calm and we are recapping the stupidity that took up too much time, I will explain to my husband, "all that he had to say was," to have prevented the escalation or to have made things right. He often tells me that that is exactly what he did and I wonder to myself if maybe I need to try and listen closer to 80% of what people are saying instead of catching the snippets, which are much more interesting and open ended.
"When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."
-Socrates