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Listening

There's a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, written in memory of a friend who had just died. In it he says these words:

I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words like weeds I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

Although Tennyson's goal was to express how inadequate words can be when we're grieving, he relates something that is simple on the surface, but profound when you think about it: words reveal a part of what's going on inside us. I bring this up because I think we can do so much good just by stopping to listen to others' words in our interactions with them. With that in mind, try to make a conscious effort this week to listen, genuinely, to someone you're talking with. I think you'll find, if you haven't already, that doing this can be just as much an expression of love as much else that we do or say.

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