The Insult of Inattentiveness

As a high school English teacher, one of my favorite activities to organize for my students was a Shakespearean insult contest. Two students would face off and cast their most acerbic aspersions at each other, ideally to the cheers and jeers of the rest of the class. It was far more fun than slogging through the text of entire acts of the plays.

It turns out that there are a lot of ways to insult people. One of them is so common that we may not even think of it as an insult:

Enlightened hearing takes in what is said. He who is lacking in [this quality] insults the person who has spoken. —Maximos the Confessor* 

More often than I’d like, I find myself distracted in conversations, and sometimes it’s my own fault. Most recently, a friend called while I was doing light office work. Instead of calling back later or stopping my work to give my complete attention, I tried to do both. Even if photocopying doesn’t take a lot of attention, the tiny bit it takes made me less present to a dear friend, who was—fortunately for me—sensitive and gracious to offer to talk at a later time that would be good for each of us.

Perhaps considering our failure to listen attentively as an insult to the speaker will motivate us to give more attention to the attention we give others.

*In his 2^nd Century on Love, #97