One word at a time, we have been given power to hear and take in. Since then, we have only gathered more, reaching mastery of turning off or being in far distance from what our ears care not to listen to and thus, hear.
Still, some things unwanted are heard. Some things we should have not listened to, we did. Of those things we made sense of, we wish we hadn’t. Of those things now in our understanding, we work at times a lifetime to be free from or peacefully take in.
While we listen and watch anything enriching for greater wisdom and satiation to the heart, mind, body, and spirit in addition to spiritual connectedness through readings and listening to what others have to say, the challenge is all that extra stuff jumping at us that seem to do anything at times to manage and sneak in.
In my earliest recollections of a radio in the Philippines, I recall stories being read aloud over a station. It would be to everyone’s own individual imagination to visualize what was being portrayed. A good storytelling could not only give you color, but depict sounds and even taste.
The closer you listened to each word spoken, the more vibrancy and movement took place in your mind, hearing even the background noises amidst the conversations exchanged in the foreground of the story.
While Mama’s gift for convincing any tale told to be true, my other favorite times of storytelling was actually not the traditional kind at all.
Rather, it would be the times where I would find myself fortunate enough to be allowed to listen to tales of the older generation around me. I would have rather stayed in those rooms, listening to “grown-up” talk than to go outside.
While open fields around my home and trees brought me great joy, those dwindled in the city skirts of my newly found surroundings in America.
Having no enthusiasm for romance novels Mama embellished herself with, the closest I could get to truth and matter was the dictionary and the Bible.
To be all of a sudden surrounded by cousins who talked over each other amidst my own siblings, it is to say the least that being hungry for real stories was what I starved for, having every desire to devour or siphon whatever I could get from someone with wisdom or wonder at any given time.
It is to no surprise to me why I looked so forward to getting up in the morning to hit the gym just as soon as it would open before sunrise following my habit-formed love for fitness in college.
Having soon discovered that many senior citizens preferred this time in the morning, I always felt I had walked in to a room full of truly golden sagacity.
Those around me may have surely not known it, but if I was not personally talking to them, scrounging up what I could about their lives, I was listening to all those around me from what foods and vitamins they ate and took to the type of aches and pains they were having to endure.
You need not Google university or YouTube seminars to gather richness of knowledge just by listening.
Today, as I read what I can, when I can outside of my driven need to keep writing and my gratitude for the serenity found in the arts, my wisdom continues to grow to many who might be surprised to hear, but from children.
Although always open for differing strategies to problem solve, no. The wisdom I gather from them is far beyond the concepts of what my part is to teach.
Thankfully, I see my students still trust me to do that part while finding comfort to engage and interact within the process of learning. Moreover, it is their innocent and brave remarks, most of the time, thinking out loud or seeking for answers where I am drawn to ponder upon, what I see, as a gifted thought.
Learning is multi-faceted. Just like storytelling on the radio or listening to discourse of great wonder and wisdom around me, I find now the phase of welcoming moments to reflect and learn more of what others can feed the heart, mind, body, and spirit so that the given opportunity is there for the taking.
Life teaches you that the power given to listen comes with a filter to take in only what is reflectively good and pure.
Surround yourself best with goodness, there will be least opportunities for dirt to filter through.
There will be moments most victorious, setting us atop others as what we will have said will astound those around us (and ourselves). Then, there will be those times where all you can do is listen in silence, absorbing each word spoken as if to feel your very soul grow strength from the very learning moment just acquired.
Like the time where my oldest son had remarked in more or less words, “You guys may have had your hard times, but we have ours, too. It’s just a different time now.”
I recall that honest-to-goodness, no intent to disrespect, quite from the heart statement, to have really silenced me.
Whether I managed a response, I only recall that my son’s words had stumped me. As I drove, I actually found myself having to take in my son’s words to slowly sink in, simmer and thicken to fullness of understanding, within years of seeing him and his siblings grow.
Academic and athletic leaders, how did I somehow forget that at highest, isolated light allows more focal point to beam upon you, singling those out for greater attack?
Sometimes the lecturer was meant to instead hear a good lecture. My son’s remark had been an inadvertent, but deep awakening for me to take in.
Whenever I look at my students now, I feel I have grown so much from my oldest son’s words of wisdom.
So many times I hear others say, guilty to partake at times, how this new generation are, to say the least, different from how we were brought up.
Interestingly, I still recall the preceding generation to have said the same about us growing up.
I have slowly matured into the acceptance that while our children may not have it as “hard” as we may have gone through, telling them that doesn’t take away their own perceived issues and challenges.
What enters the heart, mind, body, and spirit can be infiltrated with those silent doubts, hurts, and pains from insults, daggers, and blows.
There is no era free from silent infiltration of attacks from one trying to steal, kill, and destroy anything that is of love, light, laughter, and even, life.
We must ask ourselves, if we allow others to take us down, how may we help to help those we love rise to their tallest and strongest stance?
In our vulnerabilities, have we, at times, allowed our own attacks to bog down our strength where our own children sought to turn to the weak, confused as to be their strength instead?
Have we been so humbled that we only see greatness from afar, but dare not to applaud our own selves and those around us for making even one small, but forward step ahead?
Have we grown so comfortable with hearing and accepting the negative that in the moment of empowerment to provide the positive with riches in praise and honor, there is this eerie silence to take over otherwise?
I recall telling a mother how given she expressed so much conviction of what she believed to be right, always going out of her way to prove herself, that she should have become a lawyer. I recall hearing her thereafter telling others what I so honestly proclaimed.
Upon witnessing and hearing silence amongst those she had spoken my words to, I broke the doubt I felt creeping back in her by repeating what I had said once again for all to hear.
It is not always for many to believe, but who.
This mother may not ever choose to become a lawyer in this lifetime, but seeing the light illuminate in one upon a dawned belief provided warmth to the spirit. That belief in memory had been planted.
Even at the time of their birth, I saw and felt immense greatness in each of my children.
It is to my own innocence and thus, admittance, at times, to have allowed them to be surrounded by doubts and disbeliefs to a point where I may have also been guilty of having sent them the same energy.
Even believers carry a bit of dirt they failed to filter out amidst their own travels.
It is never too late to acknowledge such understanding of oneself upon the words spoken by others.
Whether in writing or oratory, words to understand are all around us.
We just go through inadvertent training of what to let in and how to perceive what we have allowed to enter.
I know now that my understanding of what can be portrayed long started with my imagination during those radio storytellings.
I know now that I held the power to resist and deny myself of romance novels, but rather open up a dictionary or tried to read a Bible until I could make sense of each word written to a point now where I expand my search for more greater depth and understanding.
I read and listen intentionally now, more than ever, having finally arrived to a clear mind to seek greater understanding of everything around me.
I have now long prepared myself for my latest years having taken mental and spiritual notes of all those around me who were living the moments and talking about them.
In this phase in life, beyond my days of being proud and stubborn (the pridefulness I’m getting down to take down, but the stubbornness has its own stubbornness), I ache to be humbled by my students and of course, my children.
No. Disrespect is still hard and should not be accepted for the moral growth and development of a child, but even so, I hardly, if ever, take such personal.
What do I see before me at a moment of challenge? I see greatest confusion as to how to be. I see me as a child over and over again.
Why? Is it perhaps while we all suggest the former, latter, and present generation are different from one another, exclaiming whose lives were hard, harder, or hardest, we fail to just accept that young, older, or oldest, the possibility to gain, the unwanted desire to endure pain, the avoidance to even feel any strain, has yet to discriminate amongst any generation or individual?
The world can and will try to dictate our becoming. Yes? Perhaps it will succeed in some ways. Still, like a child who has been taught to run from sensed danger, have not our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits been trained enough to know what to let in?
If we cannot shut our ears from listening, when and if we can, do we choose to walk away?
