“Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.”
— Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

If we’re lucky, we’re born being the center of attention after our big birthday debut. That attention is inevitably diluted, but the hunger for it remains. Some crave attention so much that they’ll do anything to keep it. The world stage is full of such characters. The rest of us find our voice in ways big and small. Real power comes when we recognize that attention doesn’t matter as much as influence does.

I try to move through this world a listener. Two ears and one mouth, as the saying goes. Yet I’m often the one who speaks up in a group, not to be first, not to be loudest, but because I’m engaged. It follows that when we truly listen, we become interested. The world could use far more interested and engaged listeners, so why not be one?

Awareness develops when we give ourselves the space to find it. Constantly trying to fill empty space with chatter in a conversation is a lot like rapidly skimming the page trying to get the gist of what a poet is trying to say. We aren’t immersed in the moment and so we miss far more than we believe we have. The opportunity for understanding drifts away in a staccato of words.

To try to understand everything is to understand nothing. And so we must learn to filter out the noise and favor comprehension. What has this person got to say? How do we respond? Attention is fleeting, but insight offers lift. We rise together when we learn to discover the quiet truth in what each has to say.