HEAR IT

Two friends, who met after many years, went for a walk together, renewing old times. Suddenly one of them stopped and said, ‘Hey, I think I hear something.’ He put aside a loose paving stone to set free a cricket that was chirping. His friend remarked, ‘that’s amazing… so many persons are on the street at this hour, hurrying from work; yet you alone heard the cricket above all the traffic noises.’

The first calmly remarked, ‘people hear in life only what they want to hear. Right now, the noise of traffic has neither increased nor decreased… but watch.’ He dropped a coin from his pocket to the sidewalk. Everyone within an amazingly large hearing distance stopped and looked around.

The man, who heard the cricket, had been able to retain his childlike ability to hear sounds. Obviously this was aided by his interest in the sounds of Nature. The hearing ability of the crowd was restricted to materialistic motivations like the sound of coins. We are born with amazing abilities to use our senses, but for most of us, as we grow those abilities get narrowed down to hear and see lesser and lesser.

It is true that we hear what we want to hear. Hence whenever we state that we did not hear something, we need to reconsider our attitude. We must accept that the onus is on us to heed and hear. Never mind the distractions; we must be better at listening. And the way to do that would rediscover the child within… that child was born with the ability to maintain an engaging interest and hence could hear it!

We did it so well as a child who could hear it...
Let’s BE BETTER at empowering the interest bit!

- Pravin K. Sabnis