OBSERVE AND LISTEN

“You, the white guys are always asking questions. You never stop to watch and listen. It is often possible to learn all I really care to know just by watching and listening. “

AMERICAN INDIAN ELDERLY

 

We hear little and see even less. That’s my feeling. With few exceptions, of people who are really attentive to what happens, it seems that humanity is increasingly accelerated because of tweets, headlines, short and intense stimuli, all continuous, rapidly expiring. So intense, no substance.

It is true, as the old North American Indian saying, that we can learn what really matters by watching and listening, if we do it well, consciously.

The difference between hearing and listening can make, even in a seemingly inconsequential act, a huge difference in the final result, as we show in this short fable:

“The village blacksmith hired an apprentice willing to work hard for little money. The boy was young, tall and very strong, if a little confused. He was obedient and did the tasks entrusted to him, but often he was wrong and had to repeat it as he paid little attention to the instructions given by the blacksmith.

At the beginning, the blacksmith was bothered with him a little, but he thought: ‘What I want is not him to listen to me when I give an explanation, but him completing the work to cost me very little money’.

One day, the blacksmith said to the boy: ‘When I pull the piece of fire, lay it on the anvil, and when I make a sign with my head, hit it with all your might with the hammer’.

The boy did exactly what he understood, what he thought that the blacksmith had said. And that day people lost their blacksmith, who died by accident because of a spectacular hammer hit on his head…”.

It is what you get for hearing without listening.

Then, it is best to be attentive and listening, to ourselves and to others.

Happy week.

Kisses and hugs,

Álex