We just don't listen.

I think most people just don't listen.

Words float about our ears like random noise. It just buzzes about and with a swift flick of a finger, it slips away.

It makes me wonder, why in the world do people ask questions? As if there isn't enough rhetorics already. It is as if people ask just for the sakes of asking. Either that, or they are just hungering for some classical cliche to wrap up the formalities of a Q&A.
Think of the classic:
Q: Hi, how are you?
A:I am fine...

Imagine, answering anything other than that. Think about it, does anyone REALLY want to know how you are?

Then try this:

Q: Hi, how are you?
A:Not good.
Q: Oh...Whats wrong?
A:Well...bla bla bla bla
(in the middle of all the bla-blas)
Q:Ah, don't worry its all going to be fine. (e.g. I don't really want to know whats wrong)

Either way, it gave me food for thought. It is interesting how people can be easily prejudiced. We walk into a conversation, with the answers of our own questions prewritten in our head. Any answer that does not come close to our prewritten answers just get flung back to some far away corner binned and canned and never thought about ever again.
What's worse, is how we just love to shove the prewritten answers right at the face the someone that you have just questioned.
I guess it is a pattern. We don't ask questions to know. We ask questions to pave a way to shove our answers facewards, for whatever feel-good reasons that we may have. How good can it be, when your 'golden answers' don't address the problem in the first place?!

In my humble opinion, using a question to set up a sucker punch of the prewritten answer is as irritating as heck. It NEVER helps.

Ask only if you really want to know. Let it stop there. Offer empathy, not answers.

Remember, if we wanted answers, we'll ask.