2 years ago I had a small conversation with my friend that would change my perspective on everything. I was talking to my friend while fishing and realized he wasn't listening at all. This was a normal occurrence so I didn't think much of it at all, but I later realized something. Before me and my friend had this conversation I was a loud kid I liked to be heard; I would always have long conversations with people. I would always share anything on my mind. I would always tell stories to people. You get the point I loved to talk about anything. I opened up quickly to new people I met and I would start talking to them about anything. I always played video games with my friends at night so I would have conversations with them over the microphone. There are some people similar to me that also like communication and talking a lot. Now there is nothing wrong with this but a lot of people don't care to listen. My previous perspective on the topic before that conversation with my friend was simply, you talk and people will listen to all of it and give feedback. I thought that anything that I said being that it was not offensive to that person, that they would genuinely listen wholly to whatever I was saying. I also expected it to be the other way around when people were talking to me. They would tell me something and I would respectively listen. I really never thought too much of this topic until having that conversation with my friend. I didn't realize then that most of the things I was telling people were going in one ear and out the other. I thought this until I started applying it to my own life perspective and realized that sometimes even I didn't listen.

Sometime in your life you have almost certainly gotten a call from someone who can't get off the phone. Whether it is a friend, relative, acquaintance, etc; you have most likely got that call. They usually will call for something simple but then maybe get into a long conversation. Then maybe this conversation is something that you don't care for so you are stuck listening until they say they can let you go. This isn't the other person's fault though, they just don't know that you don't care for what they are saying. This same experience happens all the time in many different situations and it is what got me thinking. I started to wonder if what I did whilst on the phone was something that other people did during conversations I have had. Then I realized that I get cut off a lot if I talk for a while and so do a lot of people. So that got me thinking even more and I decided to do some research to see if what I was thinking had any statistics or significance behind it, and sure was I right.

I started doing research on this topic to see if I was alone on it or not. I found out that several other people were posting on social media about this topic and sharing their experiences. I found out that this is even more common of a thought these days then I previously thought it was. Psychology today did a survey and found that 71% of Americans claim to be good listeners. This number may be high but then they did a study and found out that people can only retain half of the information someone tells them right after a conversation. This number drops to less than 25% over the course of 24 hours. I don't believe that those studies are as accurate as it could be nor were enough people surveyed so I looked for an even bigger one. A huge college study covered by a website called wordsrated.com stated that on average 51% of people are actually listening 100% of the time during a school lecture. This statistic is only for listening in school so I can only imagine how different it would be for outside of school too. So that is what I am going to talk about next.

It is all too common to have a conversation with someone and while waiting for them to finish talking, being eager to share. This also happens the other way around where someone is talking and the person listening either cuts them off, or the moment they finish saying something they instantly start saying what they want to say and don't even acknowledge what the other person is saying. This is something annoying that I have realized over time and it is just a sad truth. After having that conversation with my friend and putting the things leading up to it into context, I changed my lifestyle. I became more quiet, I didn't talk as much, I only spoke when needed. I completely changed as a person all because of one conversation. I still talked a lot and still shared what was on my mind but only to certain people. Because now I realize that there are a few rare people out there that actually do listen. Even though the majority of people usually do not care about things you say, there are a select few. There are rare people that will listen to what you have to say and actually interpret it. These are the people that you want to talk to because you will be wasting your time otherwise. In this generation if you talk a lot you are called a ¨yapper¨ which is a Gen z term for someone who yaps/talks a lot. I never would have thought too much about this whole situation until the conversation with my friend. So next I will finally share the conversation that changed my whole perception of most of the world.

2 years ago I was telling my friend a long story while we were at the river fishing. The water was babbling, trees leaves were blowing in the breeze, the sun was shining partially through clouds. It was a beautiful day on the lush riverside to go fishing. The breeze picked up then got slower and the sun peeked behind more clouds. It was a beautiful late August day to go fishing off the river. The sky got a little darker and we just sat there casting and reeling away at the steady moving river. I started to get bored because I hadn't been catching much fish so I started telling my friend a story. This was a long story about a slightly funny experience on a road trip. I had been talking for 30 seconds then I looked over to my friend. Not only was he not listening but then he blew off my story because of a cool looking cloud that he spotted. After that something just didn't sit right in my head. I knew that there was something different but I just didn't know what changed. Then it hit me like a rock, if he wasn't listening at all or caring about what I had said then why would any other people. I realized that this same thing has happened to me while talking to various other people. This made it finally click in my brain that almost all of the time spent talking; that unless what you are saying is either really important, interesting, or benefiting to someone, that they are not going to listen. So I encourage anyone reading this to not open up really easily to people. Find the rare people that will listen to you, and be you no matter what.