Listen! 

Are you a listener? Do you remember why? That sound of inner silence as a baby when your Voice was silent. How you learnt to speak. How, by listening and repeating the sounds around you, the words and conversations start to mean something. The pictures weave together and suddenly the world begins to make sense.

That conversation—you know the one—where you felt listened to, remains alive for a long time. It’s not only a moment of paying attention, it’s more like a feeling of being seen. Or sensation of being cuddled.

Learning a new language for me in my early twenties, was much like these experiences as a child. Actively listening. Paying attention to the fine details of how a word is spoken, the intonation, speed and musicality of the language. And noticing which gestures and body language are combined together in the big picture.

Later the structures of a sentence, the grammar of language gained shape. But most of all, it is the listening, actively hearing and seeing how a space can be filled with words. 

Are you listening now! Stories are the living memories of a language. Everyone is a story teller. It is in these stories, our conversations where a language lives in the Silence of the listener.

Cheers,

Nathaniel

The happy phrasing of a compliment, is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.”

Mark Twain