I came across this great passage while reading Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. I find it very true. I had a professor once who taught me that, by nature, humans are very poor listeners. The main issue being that we only listen to someone long enough to find a place where we can jump in and start telling our own story. Also true.
"People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours..."
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