Were You Listening, Or Just Too Polite To Correct?

Do you really listen to what other people are saying especially in familiar situations, or does your mind go onto autopilot and you hear only what you expect to hear and not what is actually said?

I ask this because someone asked me recently if was ready to have a laugh at my self? Not quite knowing what I was in for I said go ahead.

It relates back to my saying the Benediction at church last Sunday. For the first time for a long time I decided to use Numbers 6 24-26 in the Bible.

However instead of saying, “The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” I pronounced countenance as continence; A big difference in meaning believe me!

The other thing that amused me about my slip up in pronunciation was that it took so long to get back to me! It took 2 full days for the first comment.

And the second comment only came the next day when I said to someone that I apparently made a mistake with the word countenance and it was quite obvious from the look on her face that she had indeed picked up my mistake, yet had made no comment on it until I brought it up.

Which raises another question to my mind. And that is how many other innocent mistakes have I made that no one has taken the trouble to correct me on? And why haven’t they told me?

1. Because they never picked it up in the first place?

2. Too scared to correct me?

3. Too indifferent to correct me?

4. Feel that it is someone else’s job not theirs?

How about you in similar situations? Are you prepared to put yourself out to correct others when they unintentional and unknowingly, “stuff up”? Or do you just don’t care, or feel it is any of your business? Or are you prepared to put yourself out to help someone?

And secondly, if you like me find yourself in the situation of being corrected by someone in a lower position than you, are you prepared “to laugh at yourself”? Or are you quick to see any adverse comment as a personal attack on your character? Honest and humble correction is good, if for no other reason than that it makes you more careful in the future.

In my case the difference between countenance and continence was wide enough to be obvious, but in some cases the differences may be as glaring in meaning but not so obvious in the understanding of the differences.

So in closing how concerned or indifferent are you to the accidental mistakes of those around you? Do you care enough to put yourself out to help them, or will you leave it to someone else? Or did you just not notice in the first place because of over familiarity?

Over to you for your comment: Walter