How can they switch on their outrage at the push of a button, and where do they get the confidence to shine with opinions that are, more often than not, free of facts?
I’m astonished. Baffled, even. But sour? No. Why should I put my stomach and my heart through unnecessary bouts of feeling? It hardly bothers me when friends and strangers speak their minds. After all, we humans have this — in itself most delightful — ability to exchange ourselves through language. Exchange, not replace. So listening to, or reading, different opinions is a refreshing thing. And by refreshing I don’t mean quick, as in fast reading. It’s more of a quickening, if you will — in the old sense, the sense of coming alive. When I read or listen, part of my brain goes travelling. A travel inspector of the mind busies himself with bits of the information. Oh yes, he’s allowed to. Listening was invented, after all, so the mind stays occupied and, with any luck, learns something new. That’s why I feel — mostly — that listening is a reward, that someone lets me take part in their ideas, thoughts, and visions. I’m a shareholder in other people’s opinions. Although… some ideas I’d rather not hold a share in, nor share with anyone else. That would embarrass me enormously, because I have no fondness at all for statements with a bitter aftertaste. Too bitter. And too sour.
What, listening is hard for me? Yes, it is. Sometimes. My trouble with listening isn’t physical — it’s in the information itself. I don’t know whether these hearing problems are down to me and my aging ego, or whether the way we communicate has changed. The rhetoric often strikes me as too stubborn, too arrogant, too deeply fortified for me to get a tackle in edgewise. The block of opinion is cemented without a single gap, leaving no crack open for a doubting question. I always grow suspicious when no grass can grow on my own opinion anymore — though I’ve no wish to smoke it either. Now, what was that about cemented opinions? Strange and unreal. I often think that this or that is simply the way it got generated in my little head. Which would mean my head is smarter than… No. It isn’t.
Listening is something I had to rediscover. Because there are people — people like me — who like the sound of their own voice. And that’s already a strange urge, if you think about it. Because while I talk and listen to myself, I learn absolutely nothing new. Everything coming out of my mouth is already known to me. It’s a wonder I don’t fall asleep every time I speak. But when I listen not to myself, but to other mouths and other minds, that’s when things get interesting, because something new might actually reach my ears. That’s when things start to fizz.
Then there are those conversations in ping-pong mode. Words and sentences carried through vibrated air to various ears, and new scraps of words and whole sentences bouncing back — an inspiring hubbub of thoughts. Yes, listening can be fun, and it delivers the occasional kick, and the odd click, in the cerebellum.
I collect stories. Not out of some collector’s greed, but out of passion for the story itself. And as chance would have it, I’ve become not only a storyteller but a story-generator. What luck. Mostly for me. Whether the audience — the readers, that is — see it the same way, I couldn’t say.
The best part of it is the good in it. Because all these stories, of people and their thoughts, are inspiring, entertaining, shocking, imaginative, loving, and opinion-laden. And that gives me so much joy that neither the cherry nor the sourness ever finds a place in it.
I’m only a storyteller, and a story-collector.
Not sour, not sweet — just curious.
