Listen Up

StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization that honors and celebrates lives through listening, has declared today as the first National Day of Listening. Here is their press release:

StoryCorps is declaring November 28, 2008 the first annual National Day of Listening.
This holiday season, ask the people around you about their lives — it could be your grandmother, a teacher, or someone from the neighborhood. By listening to their stories, you will be telling them that they matter and they won’t ever be forgotten. It may be the most meaningful time you spend this year.

It made me think about how many times some people want to tell you their story but we are thinking about what we need to do or where we need to be and are only half way listening. How many interesting stories do we miss? How much of our own personal history do we not know?

I know I wish I would have listened more. When I was younger and when I was raising my sons I was to busy and distracted to listen to my parents and relatives. Now that I'm older and would love to hear these stories, my parents are deceased and I'm an only child. I still have cousins to share stories about general family history but no siblings to share and remember more of my personal history.

During this busy season and beyond, let us try to listen more, really listen, to relatives, people at church, neighbors and others that we see on a regular basis. Maybe we will learn something really interesting and maybe we will make someone feel special.

Both sound great to me.