Just Be And You Are

I've found myself drifting in and out of conversation lately. Kinda like JD does frequently in Scrubs: It's very natural; an unforced shifting towards a memory that I flash back to without thinking. And that's the key, "without thinking". I'm not thinking about forcing myself to concentrate on the conversation. There's no disrespect to the person I'm having a conversation with either. In fact, I'm following the gist of it very well and if I were to force myself to maintain eye contact or keep listening attentively to portions that don't add to the gist, the split second it takes to think about paying attention would take away from me listening and I would have to recover anyway. This may sound ludicrously detailed, but when you're the person talking, you notice that split second when the other person's eyes blink a little differently. Maybe it's the pupils, but there's a change and you notice it! There's no hiding a break in flow. There's a rhythmic cadence to conversation and it changes from person to person. I feel I lose the rhythm less now because I'm drifting as opposed to when I'm forcing myself not to drift. In fact, I believe most of us are terrible listeners because of the latter. Would the world be full of lost daydreamers and drifters if we all flowed in and out of the ebbs in rhythm? I don't think so. We might be that much more efficient/effective at conversing. This is most apparent at the end of meetings or in the middle of a class lecture. In either setting, by that time we all have a clue of what's going on and start looking out the window, at the clock, people watching, tapping our feet, feeling restless and so on. Again, I don't view this as disrespectful behavior, but rather as cues that the one-way conversation a lecturer or meeting head is having is becoming redundant, losing value, or going through a natural ebb. If these cues were acknowledged appropriately, maybe the person talking would shift gears or end the meeting/lecture, or start involving the people present. Instead, authority is often used as a mechanism to force value, not to create value. The just be and you are mentality jives well with this for obvious reasons. Forcing ourselves to be something we're not only creates false impressions of what we care about. When talking or listening, we don't have to be conscious of drifting because it happens very naturally, but make ourselves think about it because we feel like it's disrespectful. In the context of social norms, it may in fact be, but is that logical? If both parties recognized the quality or casualness or the silence within conversation fully, disrespect would play no part. We would simply be.