Can you hear me now??

I have a voice ... but is that what's really important? Is it more important to be heard or to hear? And not just to hear, but really listen?

I wonder if the skill of listening is becoming lost to us. It's a bit of a dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest kind of world out there; the reality is that we all want to be heard and sometimes we just hear whoever can speak up the loudest and longest.

My husband Eric has always been a skilled listener; I have always been amazed at his ability to hear beneath the words and to hear someone's heart; to be able to parse and then enunciate even more succinctly what that person was saying and experiencing than that person themselves! After being married to him for over 20 years, I hope I have learned a thing or two and am becoming a better listener.

I wonder if listening is a way of loving? I think it might be. When we are able to really listen to a person's heart, then we're able to love them better (but sometimes it's just to like them more).