Listening Ears
I was going to give you some perfectly good writing advice today...from Henry James and Ted Kooser. But I had to ditch it in favor of this...
I took my kids to swim this morning. This is good. They get wet and learn a life skill. I stay dry and write about life thrills.
While I was taking pen to paper, a whiny little girl walked by. She was really annoying... totally interrupted all my deep and world-changing thoughts.
Her mother picked up on this unacceptable state of whiny events and told the child, "You need to turn your listening ears on." The child stopped short, slowly rubbed each ear, then listened to her mother's point of view on things. Peace was restored to the pool universe.
I closed my eyes and got this ear-focused fantasy... there were wives and husbands flipping their ears on, kids and parents, the President of Syria and Mr. Bush, a couple of pro-abortionists and anti-abortionists (go ahead, now, you fill in the blank on people who could use to hear each other_______). Everybody was rotating their ear dials...
I don't know. It worked for me.
Public Conversations Project
I took my kids to swim this morning. This is good. They get wet and learn a life skill. I stay dry and write about life thrills.
While I was taking pen to paper, a whiny little girl walked by. She was really annoying... totally interrupted all my deep and world-changing thoughts.
Her mother picked up on this unacceptable state of whiny events and told the child, "You need to turn your listening ears on." The child stopped short, slowly rubbed each ear, then listened to her mother's point of view on things. Peace was restored to the pool universe.
I closed my eyes and got this ear-focused fantasy... there were wives and husbands flipping their ears on, kids and parents, the President of Syria and Mr. Bush, a couple of pro-abortionists and anti-abortionists (go ahead, now, you fill in the blank on people who could use to hear each other_______). Everybody was rotating their ear dials...
I don't know. It worked for me.
Public Conversations Project
posted by L.L. Barkat at 12:02 PM
2 Comments:
The world would indeed be a much different -- and pleasanter -- place to live if everybody turned on their listening ears. There's too many of us talking and not enough listening these days, unfortunately -- not least in the blogosphere.
I hear you. :)
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