My task today was to listen to people, which is difficult when you’re at a party where the music drowns out almost all conversation. When the party is on the deck of a boat, you can’t even walk out the front door to get some fresh air and chat away from the noise.

Someone said to me once that you are only truly listening to someone when you are not thinking at the same time. I usually don’t think about other things anyway when listening deeply, but I don’t necessarily focus my full attention in ordinary day-to-day conversation. I wanted to see what it would be like to listen to everyone’s every word with complete concentration.

Well, my first advice is that loud parties are not the best place to try this out. But when you can hear what people are saying, total listening changes the whole feeling of conversation. It made me feel as though there is so much more substance to even the most trivial conversations, and I just need to draw it out by complete receptiveness to what the other person is saying.

As a matter of fact, I think that states of complete receptiveness are very underappreciated these days in our culture. Usually we figure that any activity is even better when done while talking on a cell phone at the same time.