Love wont come without good listening skills...

I once read somewhere, that if people knew the arts of conversations, there would be no war on any land on earth. It only takes one good conversation for one’s problems to disappear, for one’s fears to be calmed down, for one’s issues to be resolved.

If directive talk therapy can heal wounds from abuse, mistrust, paranoia and delusions, the bitter past of a broken home, images of domestic abuse that no being can tolerate to see let alone remember the pain that was inflicted to loved ones… talking helps the speaker and the listener. There is a satisfaction that flows both ways, the speaker releases trapped thoughts, steamed feelings, haunting memories, piercing fears, whilst the listener holds hands with a person in disappear through his godly given instruments of all bonds, his very own ears. Sometimes I feel as though, the fast track to a heart, is through the ears… not by touch, not by vision, but by what a person says, or what a person does not say…

What leads us to wars, is not understanding one another… war, is another face or an argument, but in an argument you have a maximum of two players, in a war, you have two nations if not more, with all the citizens ranging from young to old.

What doe sit take for the world to understand one another? What will it take for people to simply accept the life that has struck us all, if the saying is “no one is truly happy”, why should we continue to suffer alone, why not join hands in our struggles. If no one is truly happy, then why should we envy, compare, hate, be selfish, if life had more of what you want, don’t you think life would give it to you? After all, who is ‘life’ saving your share for? … exactly… doesn’t make sense for you to hate life just because it has taken something away from you, or even worse, has not given you something you feel and think you deserve. I am a true believer that it is your fate to receive exactly what was assigned for you to receive. No one will ever snatch something that you rightly deserve or something that fate has written in your name originally, and neither will you snatch anyone else’s fate.

We can play around with decisions, arguments, manipulate a few minds, but at the end, what we get is what we were set to get in the first place, we were just trying to distract ourselves in a journey of collecting what we think is rightly ours.

So let me get this right, if through understanding, problems will be resolved, why has there been too much talking in arguments and very little settlement or understanding? Could it be that we were speaking the wrong words? could it be that we were not connecting emotionally or mentally and that is why we have been in our frame of reference the entire time, when understanding requires a shift in the frame a reference between two people in an argument (I see you, you see me, we understand one another)? Could it be that the pain was louder than the words? or could it be, that we were trained to speak our hearts… but not to listen to other’s hearts beat right next to ours, with the same amount of pain we feel… with the same amount of words flowing within… yet all we hear, are our own voices… Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. I hope I have taught this to some of my students during debates in lectures. I sometimes reach a boiling point because the student only sees one reality, and disregard the rest of the world, but patiently, I like to allow them the chance to fish their way to the reality they are missing out on, the lives of others who are not in their own circle of friends. It is very easy to lose one’s temper, there is something highly frustrating in the procedure of talking when none of your spoken words seem to be received, acknowledged and understood by the person you are speaking to. The frustration is what leads to aggression I believe. When words can’t do much, especially when you are angry and angry, the pain flips to aggression, and you start to use your hands. Maybe it is the flow of the blood, it rushes it to your heart, beats faster as you progressively get more upset with the argument, then it rushes to your mind, when you want to formulate come-backs and responses, and finally when it reaches a boiling point in your head, the blood flows down to your receptors, hands and legs, and you start to use them instead of your head.

If I can highlight one advantage I gained from learning for three years how to LISTEN in counselling classes, I learnt how to listen to the words that are not spoken, to the silence, not only the verbalized context, I learnt how to tell a story, and test people’s reaction to the story, read their faces, expressions, reactions, and mostly, listen to their responses, and that, that tells me a lot about who they are… without them even knowing. I use a lot of storytelling in my classes, I like to practice this procedure, to see if any of the students have changed, have understood, have been moved, have been reminded of a previous event, have witnessed such events from the story, and so forth… Denis Waitley once said, Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision, and I hope to do the same… after all, what do you think made circle time in nurseries so popular? If it wasn’t for the encouragement that allowed young people to learn to tell their stories…

On more days than less, I feel like I need good ears, more than I do need hearts, compassion and love. I look for friends, more than I do for love, and I am amazed by people who travel the world looking for love, when there are those who are in desperate needs for friends. Someone once mentioned that it seems as though the world is coming to an end with love, as though in the coming decade, there will not be any more love stories, and people will not marry for love, rather for comfort… and I said, maybe the world is coming to this, because we are at a stage where we need friendship, more than romance. After all that we have seen, generation to the other, friendship bonds lived longer than those of romance and love, and love will never disappear, it lives in every relationship, just embedded in a deferent image. There is love even in friendship, which is why I understand how some people live and die without having been ever loved, but have been well surrounded with good friends. And sometimes I believe that those hungry for love are mostly hungry for a good friend, more than the romance that comes along in the love story. The first duty of love is to listen as Paul Tillich said in his book. Maybe the world has an ear infection, and that is why we have so many wars lately… no one seems to be able to hear the other, resulting in lack of understanding, lack of connecting, and hence, lack of loving one another for the love of human race regardless of origin, ethnicity, religion, and experiences.

I end this note, with a strange imagination… I have a strange imagination, that the there will be a night, only one night, in this world, where no one will sleep upset, where all people will love one another… where no one will feel alone… for one night only… and I pray for that day to come… because the next morning will be the start of a new change, everywhere and to everyone.