Life happens while we’re having conversations with ourselves and other people.
Listening is the context that makes life intelligible, allows anything to have meaning, and forms the basis for all communication (both written and spoken). It’s a whole lot more than just ‘hearing’ the words that are spoken. It’s about listening with an open mind, listening without already having an answer, listening to the person and noticing what they are not
By Stu Whitley
Bio
This is the fourth in a four-part series.
During his entire life, my father has adhered to a habit of truth—‘truth’ in that he has not been afraid to question the ‘why’ of a thing. This included the way in which the past influences the future, and his determination to manage events to the extent that it has been possible.“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it,” he’d say.
This
was nowhere more apparent than in his decision to emigrate to Canada to
seek a better future for all of us. Three homes in three countries
within the span of a decade:
two brothers and I jostled our way
to the smoke green Pullman cars
only to be yanked back sharply
by a skinny old man in a pillbox cap
declaiming ‘Canadian National Railway’