I just came back to work\u00a0after dinner, where, over roast chicken and salad,\u00a0my wife began to explain to me why some people try too hard.<\/p>\n

I felt obliged to listen, but I was also tired, and had consumed enough wine to permit myself to disengage and become impatient.\u00a0 I waved my hand and said, “You’re losing me!”\u00a0 She had hurt feelings.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem was that the topic (“people who try too hard”) is a\u00a0recurring interest of hers, and I automatically leapt to the conclusion that I was about to hear the same story I’ve heard for many years.<\/p>\n

But in the spirit of full disclosure,\u00a0 like many husbands, I am a selective listener.\u00a0 If I’m reading, or watching TV, or thinking about something else, and my wife speaks to me, I am mindful of my tendency to listen for a split second, conclude that whatever she’s saying is not all that important, and throw up a smokescreen of grunts and nods while I turn off my ears.<\/p>\n

This is not good for our marriage, and I sense\u00a0 she has learned how to do the same thing to me–listen for a few seconds, generate a hypothesis about what I’m saying, and conclude that it’s a re-run that she doesn’t want to sit through.<\/p>\n

One explanation for this state of affairs is that we are, in fact,\u00a0repeating ourselves, (thematically if not with the exact same words) and that we\u00a0are now able to predict what the other person is going to say.<\/p>\n

Because what we are saying is predictable, we don’t pay much attention.\u00a0 There’s nothing new coming out of our mouths–no new thoughts, no radical new insights–and so nothing much of interest.<\/p>\n

We know how to fix this.\u00a0 Skilled in effective dialogue, we will say to each other, “We need new thoughts, new experiences, new growth.\u00a0 Let’s make it happen.”\u00a0\u00a0 And we will.\u00a0 We will go to the theater, on trips, on vacations, engage in new activities with new people.\u00a0\u00a0 We will grow and prosper.<\/p>\n

But when that’s over, we’ll have to get down to the real work: the cultivation of curiosity–about eachother–without judgment.<\/p>\n

I can hear us talking about\u00a0that now.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I will say, predictably quoting Steven Covey, “We must first seek to understand, then to be understood,” and then I predict she will roll her eyes as if to say, “Not that old chestnut!”<\/p>\n

And\u00a0then we’ll really be up against it, and have to be still–still as water–until we\u00a0get curiouser and curiouser.<\/p>\n