Talking with ears

“To truly communicate with people is very hard to do.” That’s what Celine told Jesse, in the movie “Before Sunrise,” after she asked him what he’d say to her if they were going to die that night.

It gets you thinking, doesn’t it? What does it mean to communicate with others? Does it mean talking about your day and how you reacted to it? Or going through something mundane and finding realizations that you put on a philosophical pedestal? Or expressing yourself in a way that the other person gets a glimpse of the real you?

A conversation is a beautiful thing. It provides a portal into that complex network of neurons in every person, x-ray vision to see what lies beneath the laughter and the tears, and assurance that someone cares for the thoughts that ricochet in your mind. But to get past the labyrinth of gestures, laughter and tears, one must know the right questions to ask and the right time to ask them.

A conversation is like a dance, moving smoothly so that the right emotion or feeling is translated, allowing you to discover what others feel or understand.

I’ve had my fair share of conversations. I like sitting in coffee shops to get whiffs of hazelnut coffee as well as glimpses into another person’s life. It’s nice to look at life from perspectives other than my own. But one also finds conversations in other places. I once had one with a taxi driver who told me that during the 1986 Edsa Revolt, he was among those distributing bread to both the demonstrators and the soldiers. He explained to me that no matter what, people needed to be fed.

I also got the chance to talk to a stock broker while I was eating alone in an old bakery. She told me about how difficult her job was because she dealt with clients abroad and communicated with them through the Internet. But she was happy with what she was doing because she was helping people, she said.

I guess to truly communicate is to appreciate what other people are saying. I have realized that communicating effectively is not so much speaking rapid-fire as listening to other people’s stories and thoughts, which make you realize that life is a spectrum.

A conversation is beautiful, but only if you listen. Listening and understanding—that’s how we can truly communicate.

Maolin S. Macatangay, 19, of Ateneo de Naga University, says: “I like counting my steps and it sort of ripples into me thinking up new thoughts.”