There is no love without understanding; there is no understanding without observing and there is no real observation without mindfulness. Let us quickly analyse this. Of course if I love someone I need to understand him. Without that there definitely shall be misunderstanding and the end of everything beautiful. And to understand anything or anyone I need to observe. Without observing I can not even fix an IKEA table (and understanding a human is just out of question if I am not observant)! The last link is the most interesting. If I want to observe something I have to make sure that I give my full attention and without doing ten other things in my mind simultaneously. In this age of multitasking this is a difficult task to do. But it needs to be done if I want to observe properly.
And the major way we interact with another human is through talking. Hence, if I want to observe a person then I need to be completely mindful when he speaks. I have to listen with my full attention; not to accept or reject what is being said; not to just extract catch phrases from it and make my own impression of what is being said. Easier said than done. Even the venerable Ananda (one of the major disciples of Gautama the Buddha who was responsible for transcribing all of Buddha's talks) confesses this every time he starts archiving one of Buddha's addresses. He shall never write "Buddha told" so and so; rather he will write "I heard Buddha telling" so and so! The difference is subtle but very crucial.
Please try to do it as an experiment. Try to listen to anyone/anything with full attention. Before you realise you shall start comparing, recording, or very quickly thinking something else. As a matter of fact our brain is not designed to listen/see the complete thing out there! Hypothalamus, a very crucial part of human mind, filters out the sensory signal/data and only sends contextual and some catch incidents to our brain to be processed! No wonder it is so difficult to listen anything "completely"!
But it is not impossible. As we just discussed, it is biologically impossible given our current brain architecture. Which just means that we need to rewire our brain! As Sci-fi it may sound it is actually possible and brain-plasticity is one of the main research themes in the recent years. Of course it needs practice. And any practice needs motivation. What can be a better motivation than to love your loved one even more? This can be done by giving more and more attention to what he says. So that you don't just hear empty words; you see the intentions behind those words; you see the emotions behind those intentions; you see the preconditions behind those emotions; you see his life story behind those preconditions; you see the whole story. And when you see the whole story (not analyse; but directly feel it in an instant) there is complete listening. Then there can be no conflict; there is only love and joy.
