Too busy to listen?

 

Here's todays story .. I apologise in advance for this story :) 

 

You know those days when you’re just too busy for interruptions, whatever they may be? Well, this was one of those days. Susan says, ‘There’s something wrong with the hot water, it smelt funny when I filled the bath up.’

Frustrated and inconvenienced and with no gracefulness whatsoever, I tutted, stopped what I was doing, and marched over to the hot water tap in the kitchen. I turned it on and let it run for 30 seconds.

‘It’s fine!’ I said unable to smell anything.

Later that day, Susan was running the tap in the kitchen ‘Come and have a look at this’ she said ‘There’s little black specs coming out of the tap’

I looked and saw the tiniest of bits of fluff or something. ‘It’s fine’ I said impatiently ‘just let it run for a bit'.

A few days later Susan came marching down the stairs wrapped in a towel with a ‘DON'T MESS WITH ME' look on her face.  'Come and smell the bath water’ she said, ‘there’s definitely something wrong with it!’

I went up and as soon as I walked into the room I could smell a slightly weird smell in the room. Our house was very old and an old lady had lived there on her own for years before we moved in. ‘It’s probably dust on the radiators or something’ I said.

‘It’s the water’ Susan protested. ‘As I was laying in it, I could smell it. It’s making me feel sick. Are you sure there’s nothing dead in the water tank?’

I wasn’t at all sure. But I said emphatically ‘Of course it’s not something dead in the water tank!’

The next day, I went up into the loft when Susan was out to check the tank. Thankfully, there was nothing in it.

After another few days, the smell was getting worse. We were in the kitchen and I ran the tap to rinse out our cups to make a second cup of tea, and a lot of black stuff came out the tap. ‘What is THAT?’ Susan said.

I picked a string of it up on the end of a sharp knife, held it up to the light and examined it. ‘It looks like fur!’ I said.

I can’t tell you what Susan said next, but sufficient to say she went ballistic!

‘I checked the tank and it was fine’ I offered in a weak defense. ‘I’ll check it again.’

‘No you will not check it again’ she said with increasing vigour ‘YOU WILL CALL A PLUMBER!!’

Well, a friend of mine was a plumber, so he came around that afternoon and we puzzled over what was wrong.

‘Let’s drain everything down’ he said, ‘and then we’ll do a chlorine flush.’

‘Ok’, I said.

‘And we’ll hoover out the bottom of the tanks to make sure there’s no bits in there’

‘Tanks...?’ I said

‘Well if we’re gonna do the water storage tank, we might as well do the central heating header tank and the not water cylinder while we’re here, it won’t take any longer.’

So he brought in this wide pipe that he ran from the loft out into the garden which we were going to then siphon all the water out of the tanks through. Because it was wide, it produced a lot of suction and would literally hoover everything out of the tank – apparently!

I was holding the pipe in the loft, he was out in the garden.

The first tank was done very quickly. ‘Now, put it in the hot water cylinder’ he said.

This one was going well for a minute or two, then there was sudden jolt. ‘What’s happened?’ he shouted up through the window. ‘It’s stopped coming out.’

‘I don’t know’ I shouted back. ‘Hang on...’ I started banging the pipe on the bottom of the tank.

He was looking at the end of the pipe. ‘Ok!’ he said, ‘It’s coming out again now!!'

Less than 5 seconds later, and I heard a retching coming from the garden. I looked out the window and I could see he had been sick! I rushed out into the garden to make sure he was ok. When I got there he was wiping his mouth with a look of disgust on this face.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

He gestured down to the floor ‘There was a mouse cooking in your hot water tank!’

I looked at the boiled carcass of this mouse and did not feel well. For weeks we had been bathing in mouse soup! It’s turning my stomach now, just typing this email!

In my defense, I was busy. How was I supposed to know! But isn’t that often the case? Perhaps that is what Covey meant when he said 'don’t be too busy sawing to stop and sharpen the saw'...

In life, I think there are often people, things and circumstances that nudge us .. tap us .. or gently try and indicate to us that we’re on the wrong path. We either pay attention to those little taps or we carry on blindly.

Too often we march on blindly, don’t we? It’s like the husband driving the car while his wife looking at the map says ‘I think we’re going the wrong way!’ To which he replies, ‘Yeah, but honey, we’re making such good time!’

 

Listening has been said to be the 'first duty of love', but often truly hearing another is our last chosen option.  How sad for those trying to communicate with us, and even sadder for us.