Reflect

Imagine what might happen if, for one day, the leaders of the world and everyone on social media would pause all of their opinions (the ones you agree with and the ones you don’t) and ask generous questions of one another. Public discourse has become so fraught that such genuine dialogue is hard to imagine. But it will certainly never happen if we lose this capacity in our individual lives. Deepening and even healing our relationships — the personal and the public — requires us to actually listen to one another. Rachel Naomi Remen writes, “It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us.”