When you walk the streets of a crowded town, you pass by people at all different points in their lives. Some wiser than we will ever be, some more naive then we ever were. But when you listen in on the blurbs of conversation you catch while passing by, it is someone telling their story.
At whatever age you may be, a part of you wants to think you know it all. It's your confidence and your pride, but it is really your experience that makes you wise in each aspect of your life. Now, I know twenty- year-olds who have more experience under their belt than some fifty year olds. Some people have just been fortunate in life while others have a struggled a little more than the person before them.
But while we sit here so eager to share our experience, our story, too often we forget to listen. Telling a story is repeating information you already know, listening is absorbing information you have yet to hear.
Yes, I want the world to know my story. I want my family to know how all the things they have taught me have built me into the person I am today. I want the people I love to hear my moments of misery so they can avoid the hurt themselves. I want strangers I have never met and will probably never meet to read my articles or hear me speak and learn something, find something in the mix or words that light a spark that gets them to change their perspective on life, even if only for a second.
Every second you take to listen, to set foot in someone else's shoes, brings you one second closer to becoming wiser. The day you can see perspective for all that it is, the complexity of it all, that is the day you become the wise individual I aspire to be. The day you can sit there mid-argument with your spouse with hands flying and words spewing, and take a breath and stop to actually see the situation from their shoes is the day your life becomes so much easier. You stop the insults, you stop the words you wish you could take back, and you sit there and you breathe and you think to yourself the feelings that other person is experiencing right at that very moment. The hurt YOU are causing them. The doubt YOU are instilling into your relationship. The words YOU are throwing that like it or not, you will never be able to ease the sting of. The capability YOU now have to fix the situation because you took thirty seconds to see the other person's point of view instead of setting in on you and only you.
Perspective is a miraculous, wonderful, confusing concept. But it has the ability to change your life in so many ways. So next time someone tells you a story, instead of interrupting, throwing in your input, just sit there and listen. Take it all in. Don't just hear what they are saying but actually try and understand it. Because three years later when you find yourself in that exact same situation, you could save yourself a lot of hurt all because you chose to listen instead of talk.
