stay a while and listen...

listening. it is the core of human interaction and one of the most basic forms of respect and love we can ever show another human being. it is so engrained in the human psyche that we even have that innate ability to sense when someone really hasn't been listening to us. and despite knowing this, it's a very hard skill to put into regular practice, let alone master. it seems so simple to do, yet at the same time requires a termendous amount of effort on the listener's part.

i wonder if it's because we busy ourselves so much these days that it has been inculcated into us that we should focus and ignore all distractions until we're done with our current task at hand. relationships are at the core of everything in our lives. life would be meaningless if not for the people around us who we love. yet it's so difficult to find the time and space to actually accommodate them when we're pre-occupied with something. we simply cannot things down, even for a mere 5 minutes that could make all the difference in the other person's day.

if only we could all make that effort to just listen to one another...