The sound of silence

I was told several times since I started to take calls in my new job, a telephony service desk, that I should speak up. Funnily not by the customers they understood perfectly what I told them. It was a colleague who rejected to help me with the learning, but fortunately there were many others who did help, and still don't feel it is a burden for them. This colleague however is always eager to find something wrong in what I'm doing, and emphasize it. I had to write this down for myself more than anyone else. Most of all because I like his kind of humor and first I mistaken it for a sign of an easy-to-get-on-with personality. In truth it's a whimsical one, but this is not the story.
I was about to tell what I found interesting with speaking up and listening. It's like relationships, those involved always depend on each other, and everything goes both ways or nothing goes, and there's no relationship. So no matter how loud I talk if the one I'm talking to wouldn't listen, and instead is focusing on what they're telling me. Thus even if I want to help with my answer, with no attention my words won't reach them. On the contrary if they're really interested, then they give it an ear, and by listening can easily understand what's said.
So to catch more attention or any at all we might raise our voices, but even doing so, could only make the other half do the same which then result in an argument about nothing. Both parties might talk about the very same thing, but feeling more important than the other, could think that whatever they say can only be true or make sense, thus don't even think it might easily match their talking partner's opinion.
In the end it all comes to communication again, like many things I write about here, in my blog. Maybe this goes on a different level, somewhat deeper than talking with words, and finds the frame of it, the so called metacommunication. That is to find out whether we really listen when we talk to someone and ask them, or prefer to hear ourselves, and so can only miss the very meaning of a conversation.