True listening

"A person cannot give full attention to what is being said to them at the same time as assessing it and framing a reply. I cannot do this, and neither can anyone else I have ever met. Therefore, true listening rarely occurs."

(Rachel Pinney: Creative Listening, as quoted in Jim Pym: Listening to the Light)

I think this is true about any conversation in which one is supposed to react immediately after the previous speaker has finished talking. But it reminded me most of two features of my rehab stay.

One, of how rarely I spoke during the speech-therapy-based sessions, because before I properly pondered what had been said and what could be said in response, somebody else would already be replying; in fact, often the very topic would have changed to another by the time I had a reply phrased well enough to consider it worth uttering.

And two, how during those sessions at which it was compulsory to give a short summary of one's views formed on what had been said, I would often stop paying proper attention as early as mid-session, trying to inwardly formulate (and not forget) said summary in time for when it was my turn to give it.