The art of listening (Re post from 2005)

I posted this in 2005, and seeing how it is the holiday season and we are all feeling the warmth of family, friends and home, I felt the need to re post. In the wake of what seems a wave of friends passing away, I thought this might be appropriate...

I recently busted my low carb lifestyle and dove into a huge plate of Chinese food. My passion. Put me on a desert island with a lifetime supply mu shu pork and don't even bother to send a rescue boat. At the end of the meal, I opened my fortune cookie and was totally taken off guard. We all know the silly fortunes that you can get, or the ones that say, "You will win the lottery today" but this one was really special. It simply read, Discover the world of your friends around you. Maybe this doesn't hit you like it did me, but I have for the longest time thought that we are so busy with our own lives, we lose sight of the world surrounding our friends. I have a friend that does not know the first thing about horses, nor does she really care. But she always makes a point of asking me about my horses and listens in earnest about my last horse show. That is so special. In return, I listen in earnest to her stories of her children and the nightmare of potty training, even though I have no kids of my own and have no idea where she is coming from. See how that works? When we step away from that which is interesting only to us, and learn to love the the things that our friends love, we become better friends and better people. So what if you don't care about fishing...if your best friend loves it, listen and learn. Who knows, you may learn to love it too? How boring would it be if all our friends had our same interests in every way? I love my friendships with whom I have very little in common. Yes...you read it right. I learn new ways of thinking from them, a new point of view. If the only people that I hung out with were people of like minds...how boring would that be? Take a step outside of what you know...listen, really listen, to your friend's passions. Re-learn the art of listening, and you might just be surprised by what you find out about yourself.