Notes From Public School - Day 105

One summer evening, I was sitting on a bench on Main Street reading my worn copy of “Cry The Beloved Country." 

I was marveling at the way Alan Paton listened to life, the way he wrote about it.

I began writing in my notebook, wondering at the life around me.

I looked up and saw an old man shuffling by. 

He wore a tattered, torn raincoat, a baggy pair of pants splattered with mud, and a pair of leather shoes with the sides split out of them.

Those shoes revealed sockless, bruised feet that were battered by the hot, hard streets. 

I watched him quietly, without speaking, only listening, as he passed by.

He wasn’t speaking to me or to anyone around him. 

Or was he?

“Maybe,” I thought, “Just maybe the most important things in life are quiet and speak to us twice as much without words.”

I listened in a way I had never listened before. 

I listened to the old man’s face.

Yes, I listened to his face. 

I listened to each wrinkle along his forehead.

“What made that wrinkle?” I asked myself. “Was it laughter…or tears? Is it natural old age…or deep suffering? Was it carefree living…or a heavy, heavy heart?” 

I listened to the sadness in his watery blue eyes. 

“Why are you looking down as you shuffle by?” I asked myself. “Are you holding back tears? What have you seen with those eyes?” 

And I listened to his dirty, unshaven cheeks. 

“Do you have anyone to take care of you?” I thought. “Are you lonely…are you alone?”

Listening to faces is hard work and has to be developed slowly over time. 

We live in a world that teaches us to speak twice as much as we listen, or to speak without listening at all.

Yet, over time, listening to faces will grow the most important thing we can have in our hearts — empathy for each person we encounter every day. 

And, over time, listening to faces will grow the most important thing we can have in our hands and feet and, indeed, words — simple kindness.

 I put my arm around the shoulder of a shuffling old man.

“Would you like to sit down and have coffee with me?” I asked.

I found a friend because I listened to a face.