It’s interesting that silent is an anagram of listen don’t you think?
I mean we’re living in a world where we are surrounded by a cacophony of people and things trying to capture our attention, to get us to listen.
Each of these things in their eagerness to register with us seek to give us more babble, more noise, forgetting that we need space to be able to really give attention.
It reminds me of the story of the sun and the wind competing as to who would get a man to remove his raincoat. The harder the wind blew, the more force it used to tear the raincoat off of him, the more the man clung onto it. The sun, however, simply shone and as it grew hotter the man slowly shed his coat.
There are two things I can take from this observation.
One, if you really want to listen to another person, you need to create a silent space in which they can share their thoughts, their words and their feelings.
Two, if you need someone to listen to you, you need to have a simple, compelling idea. Let that idea shine like the sun. It needs little augmentation or fanfare to do what it does. Let the idea itself create the need for silence from the listener.
Often, the louder and more chaotic the music, the less we pay attention to the lyric.
As I mentioned in my blog, we’re often to busy categorising things, labelling them and have opinions to really give attention.
We are simply not silent enough to listen.
Have a great week
Alan /|\
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