I remember as a child, waking in the middle of the night, terrified by the characters in my dreams. You see, they were completely covered in ears... ears of all shapes and sizes moving randomly to discern the slightest sound.

I blame my mother for this. When we children wanted to tell her something, and she was otherwise occupied, she would proclaim loudly, if not at all convincingly, "I'm all ears. all ears!".

At the time I accepted that ‘listening' happened with one's ears and ‘understanding' depended on having a large vocabulary. However, over time, I came to appreciate that words can have any number of meanings. Each of us has different interpretations, different emotions that we attach to words. Suddenly, ‘understanding' wasn't quite so simple!

In fact, it seemed to become even more complicated when I realized that what is not said is often more important than what is!

But over the years, we all become a little smarter. Like you, I discovered that by "listening with my eyes" the subtleties, the nuances and the truths behind the words were evident in people's body-language. I could ‘hear' what was meant. Listening with our ears and our eyes can help us to hear with our heart!

With each new learning, ‘listening' and ‘understanding' have taken on new meaning. Where once they related to words, for me they now have more to do with an the individual's thoughts and feelings.

How about you? When you listen, do you listen to hear - or to understand?