Picture this: You're in a conversation with someone. This person is doing most of the talking, while you are attentively listening. Suddenly, you realize you haven't been listening.
You realize that you have been trying to figure out where to look. You haven't even heard a word for the last three minutes. Instead, you have been looking at different spots on the person's face. Each eye, the nose, the mouth...
And then you REALLY can't concentrate because you don't know where to look.
You try to casually alternate. Spend five seconds looking at a point just beyond the person's head, look down then up, hang out at the chin for a while...
One of my earliest posts on this blog was about being an introvert. One thing I talked about was that, as an introvert, I need to hear something and then process it. If I keep hearing and hearing and hearing my mind starts to kind of glaze over. And I kind of forget to keep listening.
And then I get self-conscious when I'm not listening. Like, what am I actually doing while I'm listening?
Hence the staring games.
So, anybody else? Or am I alone in this oddity?
Commence reassurance.
Now cats, they have staring down to a science!
3 comments:
i've done that plenty of times. though usually i just start thinking of something else. and it always seems to happen when i'm being told what i need to do....
Yes! You can never look someone in both eyes, it's one or the other. Do you focus on the right, left, or dodge back and forth. Maybe we should just close our eyes and actually listen...naw that'd be weird.
Oddly enough...you're not alone :-)
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