Listening

There's a chapter called "The Winter of Listening" in "The House of Belonging" (David Whyte). I've reread this passage many times and each time look at it from different perspectives. There are three short passages in that poem that have stuck in my mind more than the rest....

"All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say

All those years
forgetting
how everything has
its own voice
to make
itself heard

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening"

I wonder if we look at "all those years listening to those who had nothing to say" and see ourselves within that sentence. How many times did we speak for the sake of hearing ourselves talk, with no substance whatsoever? Or how we automatically take what someone in a position of power says for virtue of their level or position, and not knowledge or expertise? And, yet from another perspective, do we listen because it's what we want to hear even when the words don't seem to ring true?

So isn't it time we just listened? To others....to what's in our hearts......to the world around us just as it is?

Over the past few weeks I've heard so many tell me of people in their lives who are "wired"....who never stop, always looking for another way to do things, or do more, when they'd be better off to just "be", experience silence and let the world in?

"All those years forgetting how easily you can belong to everything simply by listening...."

Stop. What do you hear? And when is the last time you became one with the world rather than fighting life every step of the way?

<----a listening
Donna Karlin