Further lessons in communication

The household is a little closer to complete.  We have TV.

We’ve been in this house for six months and the TV is finally working properly, through a newly effective connection to the antenna on the roof.  Setting up the TV is one of the things I like to get done on the first day of a move, so having this fixed feels like another “moving in” step to me.

It’s also a kind of freedom.  For the last six months we’ve had to either settle for whatever had a clear channel or switch off.  Now all the channels are there, and we can choose whether or not to watch them.

Humble enough to listen

One of the things that I've always done is to be very tolerant of other views.  Actually, when I was in year 10 in Wodonga, I went even further, taking extreme adversarial positions that bordered on the absurd, just so that there would be an interesting discussion.  (My social science report from Mr Chalk ... yes, his real name ... actually mentions this as a criticism, because it was a tad disruptive.)

I've evolved a bit since then, to the point that I'm simply inclined to allow that other people have their own views, and that even if they conflict with mine, that's no reason to think less of them.  The most obvious example of this is the fact that Mrs G is a church-going Christian and I'm a committed atheist.  I don't see any sort of personal conflict in the fact that I helped her study for her reconfirmation of her baptism by contributing my knowledge of biblical history.

However, I can also be an intellectually arrogant person, an ugly trait that I've had for a long time.  Even though I know loads of people smarter than me it still gets a run around the block every so often.  One of the hardest lessons in overcoming that trait has been to appreciate the value of effective listening.