Listen

I do. Listen that is. That’s what I am doing now: listening. The tram as it rumbles by and prepares to stop at the leidesplein stop. The other tram as it rumbles by only to brake a few more hundred feet down the road. I listen to the sound of clanking from the cafe below. My, they seem to drop a lot of things. I hear the flanking or broken glass and bouncing silverware more than I think I should. I hear the fountain gurgling. The past few days it’s been almost 100 degrees here so children were in the fountain splashing. This morning I don’t hear much splashing, just the gurgling of the fountain. It’s over 20 degrees cooler today. I hear voices but cannot not discern words. I probably wouldn’t understand them anyways once I don’t speak Dutch. A plane goes overhead, mopeds buzz by and every once in awhile the tinkling of a bikers bell. I hear laughter, a gut sounding laugh, and know something was funny to someone.

Listening is a lost art in our world. We hear but we don’t listen. We talk but we don’t say much. We sing but we are off tune using words that don’t make sense. We argue with no point. We dance, well they call it dancing, but it looks like there is a squirrel in their britches. We d things but we often don’t do them with excellence. Listening is hearing at its excellence..we don’t take the time to listen for many reasons but mostly because we are in a hurry. I sat and read a book to a young child a couple weeks ago. I am sure he has heard that story enough that though he can’t read he could tell me. Yet, I sat and read. He listened. We need to sit and listen to each other more. I did lunch awhile back with friends. We talked. We listened. We spoke. We heard. It was a 3 hour lunch and it didn’t take us that long to eat; it was the listening. Go listen to someone today… really take the needs time to listen. It’s amazing what you may hear.