SMotD - What Did You Just Say?

Listening.  Though I would never want to reduce something so beautifully complex into one word, if I had to define what most NATs struggle with, it would be the ability to listen.  My mind moves in many different directions, all at once, and if you aren’t interesting me, or if you are saying something that I cannot connect with a learned experience, the chance is you have no hope of garnering my full attention.  Sure, I may nod, but I drift off.  And on the phone…forget it.  You might as well be reading ingredients and proportions off the back of a fruitcake recipe.  I just won’t care.  So is the context for today’s SMotD, the moment I realized that conversation fillers cannot substitute for listening.