Not a talent. Not something I give to others. This is a gift for me, for my pleasure, for me to enjoy. My whole life through. I was given the gift of truly enjoying people’s stories. Enjoying hearing where they’re from, how they were raised, hearing the joys, the trials and tribulations of their lives. The gift of wanting to look and really see where they’re coming from. To imagine a moment in their shoes. I love that moment. With that moment, I can live more than just my one life. With those moments I can experience much more than one lifetime allows.
Listening, I can get a glimpse of a new point of view, different from my own, a new experience. I can experience moments of another person’s life. One I never would have had in my one lifetime. This gift, not always meadows and butterflies. Such is life. A glimpse of the joy, a taste of the pain. Another person’s life I never would have known of, in my one lifetime.
I sharpened and polished this gift. I learned how to enable and encourage people to talk about themselves. For me, with this gift and people’s tendencies, not all that difficult. It seems people want to tell you their story. They like to tell you their side. I honed two key elements required to enjoy this gift. To listen to what they say and to think about what they said. Not how it relates to me, a common mistake, but how it relates to them.
This is where I get to put myself in their shoes, where I get to experience another life. I get to see a different view I never would have known. I get to play with my gift again!
One of my greatest joys is when I say, “I never thought of that”. Yes, I realize I’m “using” people for my own enlightenment, but what is it when both sides come out better? Win-win, I think.
This gift, fairly guilt-free. Because yes, the pain comes with it, their pain, now felt. The shattering of long-held beliefs comes with it. The loss of the comfort of being “right” and others “wrong” hits hard. If I really listen, I find that most people have good reasons for doing what they do. It’s hard to judge once you’ve heard their whole story. Which is the only way you can really live a moment in their shoes.
There is a price with this gift, Conservatives can now have good reasons, Progressives, very valid points. The joy of righteousness, now hard to maintain. “Normal” just a memory. To realize from all these moments in the shoes of others, “there go I”, makes my foundation shaky. I don’t feel as grounded. This gift, what, a curse? No, not to be.
This gift, a blessing I enjoy to this day. I don’t play with it as much as I used to. But my life is much richer than my life alone, without other lives explored, without other lives lived. I discovered a wonderful world when I finally realized, just how little I know. And with the weight of my own life, so much to bear, I can carry that weight, the load lighter now. The less judging of others, now possible with this gift, the load off my shoulders, immeasurable. I now have only one I can change, only one I need to judge. This is the gift I have. For me.