“Life is like a tale that lives, some life stories are written so vividly that, as you read, you see it’s action filmed upon the screen of your mind. We can’t all be such writers but that should not stop us from sharing our tales of life.”
After reading the above, it made me realize that the value of a story told, may depend as much on the listener or reader of the story as it does on the storyteller. Some people have the gift to put themselves into the story they are listening to or reading. While others see reading as a waste of time. For them, there is no excitement in a written story like there is in a football game on a big screen TV. They will never catch the emotions of their ancestors while traveling across the desert in a wagon train. They won’t even give those stories a chance to expand their minds because the past is the past and they are living in the here and now! Their ancestors fought the hostile weather as well as the hostile Natives who did not want them imposing on their territory. They were in horse drawn wagons not new Chevrolets and Fords. They were making 18 miles a day not 4-500 miles a day. Reading about the lives of others may be compared to the art of listening, of being someone who can be excited or intensely interested in what others have to say. Someone has labeled good listeners as ‘charmers’ such as the thought below: “Charmers immerse and focus themselves in what the other person is saying. They aren’t busy thinking of a rebuttal or a response. They don’t interrupt people while they’re speaking, try to dominate the conversation or tell stories to brag about themselves. They don’t use a conversation to give a lecture or unsolicited advice. Instead, they make people feel like they’ve been heard and focus on what they’re saying. “Everyone loves to talk about themselves,” says Mike Goldstein, “Ask the people you meet to tell you about themselves.” A conversation may be used to learn about what they know.” “You’re far more likely to charm someone when you make them feel heard,” says author Cherie Burbach. Someone has said, “I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.”
Most of us can hardly wait for someone else to slow down just enough so that we can get a word in edgewise. While doing so we are hardly able to really listen to what they are saying to us. If parents jumped in to their children’s conversations, sooner than later the parent would no longer be a sounding board for their children. In life, our close friends are those whom we find to be listeners, those interested in us.
Our lives are a series of stories, there are those who enjoy telling those stories and there are those who enjoy listening to those stories. Friends may be those who will be the listener one day and the teller the next. The best advice that can be given anyone who wants to be a friend is to learn, to enjoy the stories of life and to shut up and listen. Put yourself into the stories being told.