Do You Hear What I Hear?

"Intentional Listening" is what I heard in my head as I awoke the other morning. It seemed to make perfect sense at the time, coming as I was from the state of dreams. Apparently, I had been dreaming about listening with intent, or I had been intending to listen. Or maybe....
Anyway, I let the phrase just sit there in the outskirts of my consciousness. I even had the thought of going through my day, intentionally listening. I wondered, do I listen WITH intent, or do I listen FOR intent? Or both?
When we are interacting with others, we can always choose to listen with intent. In fact, we do that without even thinking about it. We come to any interaction with preconceived notions about how it will go. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. It helps if we do not go into a situation with the idea that it is not going to go well, as there is a measure of self-fulfilling prophecy at play here. Say you go into a post office expecting a long line, surly clerks and an overall frustrating experience. Chances are that is what you get. You could instead go in with a book, treasure the waiting time, or strike up a pleasant conversation with the person next to you in line, then smile winningly at the clerk (OK, forget getting through to the clerk). Then your intent improves your experience!
It's the same with listening. If your intent in listening to another is to really, really hear what they have to say, not only the words, but their intent, then you have got a win-win situation. You may not like what you hear (insert example here) but if you listened with the intent of truly communicating, then you accomplished something! By the same token, if you read this post with the intent of being enlightened, you have just been fooled! Haha, Happy April Fool's Day!