Listen with Intensity

ByHeather

In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg’s classic collection of meditations on finding the writer within, she has an essay on talking and listening with friends as a means of bringing stories to life. She says,

Because of the intensity of her listening, the story, which I had told many times, took on a great brilliance. I remember the light off the wineglasses, the taste of my chocolate mousse.

We often think that our friends are interesting because of them: because of their personality or because of their stories. But there’s more to it than that. We are part of the dance. Our engagement is part of the equation. How interesting we find our friends also depends on how intensely we listen to them. When we engage others deeply and listen intensely their stories come alive and their personalities become more vibrant.

Who knew?

Similar Posts

Canada Relations

ByHeather

Geography has made us neighbors, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies.

— President Robert F. Kennedy on US / Canada relations.

The US President’s first foreign trip is highly symbolic. Yesterday President Obama reinforced a long standing tradition and made Canada the destination for his first foreign trip. President Bush’s first foreign trip was to Mexico. US / Canada relations were strained throughout his entire term. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford never visited Canada at all.

Granted, this trip was more than a pit stop than an extended visit. He arrived in the morning to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ate through a working lunch, held a joint news conference, met briefly at the airport with the leader of Canada’s opposition party, and was back home in the White House in time for dinner.

Even though he only had time to pop in for a quick chat, I am glad that my native country is back at the top of the list for our new US President.

TV Ads – Too Many?

ByHeather

We are in the business of providing the material that prevents the commercials from all slamming together . . . that’s what we are doing here. That’s what we are doing on the West Wing set. We gotta deliver them twelve minutes of stuff to separate the Chevy commercials.

— Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. Executive Producer of the The West Wing. Quoted in an NPR interview, January 2006.

I counted forty-two ads in last week’s episode of Lost. And that does not include any that aired before the show started or after the credits started to roll. Just forty-two ads in five breaks squeezed between six seven-minute segments of content. There were almost nineteen minutes of ads in a sixty-two minute time slot. That’s almost 30% of the air time dedicated to noise from advertisers.

Create Your Own Reality

ByHeather

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created—created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.

— John Schaar

Time without attention is worthless

ByHeather

The worst of states is when you experience neither relaxation nor productivity. Be focused on work or focused on something else, never in-betweeen. Time without attention is worthless, so value attention over time.

— Timothy Ferriss, 4-Hour Work Week.

I am on the final chapters of 4-Hour Work Week. As hard as it is for me to imagine enjoying his company, Ferriss is nailing it.

D•R•Horton

ByHeather

We went to our first HOA meeting this week for our new home in Carillon Forest. It was great to meet some of our new neighbors and we learned a lot. Mostly we learned that there are still lots of requests pending with the original developer who built all the houses in the neighborhood a few years back. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be responding to our requests.

It occurred to me that buying a house from DR Horton is like buying a band instrument from Professor Harold Hill. The Music Man comes to town, sells you a shiny new band instrument, and then moves on. Once he’s gone, he’s gone!

The Squeaky Wheel – Revisited

ByHeather

The other day I posted how the squeaky wheel doesn’t always get the grease. Sometimes, it gets replaced. I found another variation to this delightful adage on the DesignAday web site.

“Broken gets fixed. Shoddy lasts forever” . . . When deadlines are tight, and there is more work to get done than there are developers or hours in the schedule, it’s not the squeaky wheel, but the jammed one that gets the grease.”

— Jack Moffett

So true. This is my frustration with Apple’s iPods. I have a 3rd generation Nano that has a couple of annoying bugs in the software. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I convert many of them to audiobooks so I can listen in the “faster” mode. Unfortunately, the fat Nano has a hard time remembering that it is set on the “faster” setting. I have to hit menu four times to back out of the current podcast and drill forward two settings menus to remind the Nano that it is still set on “faster.” Then back out two menu settings and drill back into the podcast. I have submitted bug reports to Apple at least a half-dozen times but I am afraid that my little bug isn’t broken enough to warrant a fix.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.