One should always balance the time dedicated to speak and the time dedicate to listen.
Being able to listen to others is a quality in extinction, like pandas or whales.
Unluckily there is not any way to save it in a zoo or to prevent Japanese fishermen to hunt it, as men can try to do with pandas and whales.
But maybe it’s not so tragic, who would like seeing understanding and attention for others into a cage?
There are other possibilities, less zoological and more botanic...
We might try to grow inside ourselves the frail and uncommon little plant of silence, which has a peculiar scent.
When this plant is in blossom the flowers are open to others and can absorb not only their words, but a little of their thoughts, their feelings and their grateful surprise.
Because it’s always a surprise to realize that someone is ready to listen to us, without any intention to interrupt and to take firmly the thread of conversation in order to drive it to their own personal matters.
Federico Fellini, the great film director, once made one of his characters say:
“Silence, let’s be silent...if everybody made a little of silence, maybe we could manage to understand something”.
Noises in summer seem to be amplified, not only in summer actually...
As if people felt a kind of “Horror vacui” which they had to fill up also with sounds, to be sure that they are not alone.
A voice which never disturbs me (there are several) is the one of the gentle wind which sings softly its eternal song over a field, among tree leaves....