A Time to Listen...

St Ethelburga. Tuesday 7th July, 2020

Four times in my life I have been the recipient of an unsolicited personal outpouring from a stranger. The last time was about 18 months ago when I was travelling from Scotland to London. I had been hugely spoilt and was in the First Class. I love it. It is comfortable and spacious. It is like a holiday treat. I watch the countryside, the towns and the cities as through a panoramic Window. Edinburgh Castle, the North Sea Coast, Durham Castle and Cathedral, York Minster, the Lake District...endlessly fascinating and often stunning. All this while coffee and drinks and eats and foods are served.

At Berwick on Tweed an appropriately tweeded lady sat down opposite me. We smiled and I watched the remarkable view as we left Berwick and crossed the viaduct. A kindly waitress then served drinks and another offered a variety of luncheon alternatives. After the detritus had been removed the passenger opposite asked if she could tell me a story. Slightly nonplussed yet subconsciously aware of hurt in her eyes I said 'of course'.

'I speak to you because you are a stranger and reading that book by Proust', she offered.

She then spoke quietly, succinctly, unemotionally about her marriage and her falling in love with someone else, a mutual friend of her and her husband. I am not usually a good listener but apart from a few words of encouragement and a query or two I remained silent and attentive. As we neared London she thanked me. She did not seek advice or solutions or insights or opinions but simply wanted, as she said, 'to externalise the raging of her mind and heart' and felt she needed someone to be there. She did not want to talk to a confidante, a counsellor, an unseen God or to herself or a wall but simply to another human.

We parted at Platform 1 Kings Cross. She went her way and I went mine.

Today I received an email from a friend/acquaintance who wrote that her husband of 25 years had left her. When I mentioned this email to a friend without revealing whence it came or the author she turned to me angry.  "Why do people write that sort of thing? What do they want? Can't they sort out their own mess? What is the point? How vulgar to display it all".

There is a time to speak and a time to refrain from speaking.

There is a time to listen and a time to refrain from listening.

It is wisdom that discerns the appropriate time and place and person.