it will take a long time and a lot of active listening and empathy to resolve it, but history tells us again and again that can be done if there is the will. By people who can listen and empathize with one another.
it will not be resolved by argument and debate, that is for sure.
As the two major political parties move farther and farther away from the center and more and more to the outer edges of political thought, they leave me farther and farther behind. My life is not an argument, I don’t care for my politics to be either. I like solutions and compassion but I’m also hiding out on my beautiful farm, my own shrine to a different way of thinking. I live a life everyone else believed was impossible, and that I believed was impossible….
Active listening is taught in hospice work because hospice workers are taught to never give false promise or hope to those on the edge of life. The best comfort you can offer is to listen, not to reassure. It isn’t going to be better, they are not going to live. That was a window into true understanding of empathy as well as listening.
By: Jon Katz
