Are you Listening?

Best friends are supposed to be forever.
A best friend is supposed to understand when not everyone else does.

Love from a best friend is unconditional and unbreakable.

~MJD

____________________________

Could You Just Listen

When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I’ve asked.

When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me and you have to do something to solve my problems, you have ailed me, strange as that might seem.

Listen--all I asked was that you listen, not talk or do-- just hear me.

Advice is cheep; twenty cents will get you both Dear Abby and Bill Graham in the same paper.

I can do for myself, I’m not helpless--maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.

But when you accept as a simple fact that I do feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to convince you and get about this business of understanding what’s behind this irrational feeling.

When that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice.

Irrational feelings construct more sense when we understand what’s behind them.

Perhaps that’s why prayer works, sometimes, for some people--because God is mute, and he/she doesn’t give advice or try to fix things.

“They” just listen and let you work it out for yourself.

And if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn--and I’ll listen to you.

—Anonymous —