FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1105

To converse is to hear.

Conversing is not two people talking at each other or to each other or even with each other. It is hearing each other. It may not be agreeing with each other. It is standing in the face. Hearing is the essence of meeting.

It is active: it is taking in. Hearing is not done to the other as listening is; it is opening the walls, allowing touching. Touching does not mean that I accept your propositions, but it does mean I assimilate it, allow them to inform my own. Hearing does not figure out ways that our thoughts are different nor even the same: hearing does not analyze. Analysis might come later. Hearing is attempting to understand: understand not only the thought, but what lies beneath the thought.

To converse, hear.

To converse is to hear.

Please pass it on.

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Conversation is a new world waiting; there is much to explore, let us begin.

:- Doug.

We are imaginative critters—we want to have something larger and beyond us, better than us, something to aspire to. We want a wide-open blue sky overhead. This feeds our blood and our flying. Icarus had it right. The teller of his story could not explain why Icarus flew away and never came back to the teller’s earth and its chains.

:- Doug.

I opened my inner eyes and saw that each of us compasses a universe; these universes can and do freshen each other like spring breezes; these breezes open the others they touch with songs of what we can do, and with proddings that now is the time to begin.

:- Doug.