It is a known fact that many people in our society endure loneliness, including very young people. It is very sad to hear an 18-year-old girl admitting that she would like to die. Loneliness is an indiscriminating force gnawing the core of a healthy society, since a cohesive society can only be formed through strong relations.
Relations are fundamental throughout our existence and the world’s. This is strongly evident in nature where complex and healthy ecosystems depend on relations between the myriad of elements of which they consist.
If nature presents such fascinating relations, shouldn’t we all seek to foster a relationship with its Creator, who is the source of all well-intentioned relations in existence? People lead healthy lives if they are able to foster and maintain healthy relations. Strong cohesive families are the building blocks of a stable society, and we should seek to build and nurture our families on God’s omnibenevolent image.
Why is listening so fundamental? Through listening relations are created, or solidified. Being helped by others in sharing our burdens is a fundamental need. One needs to find somebody who can carry one’s burden with him, who can feel secure that what is confided remains in custody of one’s friend.
But for this to happen, we need to learn to listen, because listening properly is an art. One needs time to listen well, to remain in silent attention, in order to comprehend, to offer solutions without proposing anything, or worse still, preparing an answer while listening. One feels understood and truly aided not with words but with disinterested concern.
Listening to the cry for life of the unborn, to the sigh of relief of those who anxiously awaited the result of a blood test, to the good news of a married couple who for years have hoped to have a baby…, is the way we build brick by brick a just and strong social milieu.
Interestingly, the fact that students who are regularly corrected for their misbehaviour will be the ones who will, ultimately, most appreciate their guardians, for the simple reason that, on receiving their school-leaving certificate, they remember more the attention and concern they received than their misdemeanour. This is quite significant. It denotes that we cannot live without others’ attention and care. Such efforts, even when corrective, will be ultimately valued by the individual.
Our hectic way of living does not promote healthy relationships
Prevention is better than cure, lest we want our society to resemble hasty patching of a wound. It is ironic that societal malaise is on the increase despite the seemingly economic well-being of our society.
To avoid depression, which is evidently present in our progressive society and which can lead, although not always evident, to suicidal thoughts, even suicide, the art of listening is cardinal in responsible individuals. When one is determined to take away one’s life in order to feel a degree of emotion and sentiment reflects terribly on our proliferous society.
Surely, one cannot give that which one has not. I ask, will our families succeed to educate their children in this art of receiving one another from an early stage in life, given that the parents themselves are already distant, perhaps even ignoring each other, seemingly treading on irreconcilable parallel lines despite living under the same roof?
This reality seems to suggest that our society is heading where it shouldn’t, and, one might suspect, this is an irreversible process since both parents cannot refrain from going out to work, for obvious reasons, especially if they are in need of an income to settle their bank loans.
Our hectic way of living does not promote healthy relationships, where we can exchange ideas and express sentiments. Contemporary lifestyles are not conducive to emotional well-being. We barely look at each other’s eyes, hold hands, address emotional and psychological hurts, share experiences, tell stories, have a beer together. Today relaxing is almost frowned upon; we almost conclude, erroneously, that we “lose time” in friendship.
In an ideal world, people are respected for what they really are, not as robots, not as machines, not as merely administrators, not whether one is rich or poor, not as outsiders, not as numbers; but names, members of a true brotherhood.
This would also guarantee a much-desired inclusive society, where no one lives in anonymity, no one feels unwanted, irrelevant and unaccepted.
The welcoming of foreigners in our small country will not remain an ideal concept if charity actually begins at home! This underlines the need for us to be true listeners to one another. If we are not able to listen to our beloved ones with whom we are so closely related, will we ever succeed to welcome people who arrive from afar?
Promoting the art of listening is surely a comprehensive challenge but also a possibility to guarantee to our new generations a world which is far better than the contemporary one, where the Mediterranean will no longer be a massive cemetery but a cradle of life.
Rev. Dr Joseph Zammit is assitant head at the Sacred Heart Minor Seminary, Gozo.