Hearing Words of Wisdom

When we listen to a speaker, we are gathered and expectant. We expect an ideal message or certain edifying ideas from the speaker. Because of our need to satisfy our intellect and emotions and to get some security, we want to hear words of wisdom, and we remold the speaker’s words to satisfy that need. We shape them and reshape them, manufacturing fixed and definite impressions from the raw materials of the speaker’s words. The result is that we constantly have nothing but ourselves bouncing back on ourselves. That is always a problem. It is very difficult to find both an audience who will sit in no-man’s land and a speaker who speaks from no-man’s land. That kind of attitude is very difficult, extremely hard to find.