A friend sent me a blog recently by Dr. Mark Allen Sircus. He was writing on the importance of being a good listener. By that he didn’t mean to sit quietly. Sitting quietly allows the mind to go on speaking to itself. No, he was talking about being open to ideas that are foreign.
To listen is to suffer because we do not want to listen to anything that might require a change. To listen is to change. We cannot change without listening… We need to change just to listen. (HeartHealth)
I confess, I’ve been guilty of sitting quietly, following the thread of my thoughts rather than hearing another person’s ideas. Worse, if the thoughts of the speaker are repugnant to me, I close my mind and can’t wait until my opponent stops for a breath so I can dive in. These are the times when sitting quietly is to engage in the deceit of listening.
Of course, I can deceive myself as well as others. Sometimes, I try to avoid my thoughts, too.
The written word is another story. There’s no escaping it. Words scrawled upon a page or thrown upon a screen can expose my inner world as clearly as a mirror can reflect my outer one. Written words do not disappear into airy thinness like spoken ones. Once hardened by ink, these words refuse to allow pretense. I can’t claim I’ve been misunderstood. That’s why writing is important to me. It is a way listening to myself. That, too, can be an opportunity for change.
Courtesy of www.mypinkytoes.wordpress.com
