Covid has so much to answer for, but for now it’s my reason for having to listen. Plugging in to headphones, listening to faceless people at endless meetings at work. Turn on the radio and listen to the myriad of advisors…all now experts on mental health.

Read the blogs, watch the vlogs, so much information to listen to. It’s so hard to be consistent with your actions, reactions to this overwhelm. So many voices now, social media, Zoom, Teams meetings where you’re muted and forced to listen, only so that others can blow their bugles of expertise.

So many words. Like building blocks, they build huge edifices of indecision sometimes deep, anonymous wounds confuse us so thoroughly, facing this way and that, we dance in a choreographed fog not knowing where the next stab will come from, not knowing when the string of words become swords.

Words, joined together with little thought between them. I once heard an artist describe how to paint a tree.
‘Look at the trunk, the branches and the leaves of course. But never ignore the spaces of sky you can see between’

We must listen for the spaces between the words, between the sentences and recognise the silence. The breathing space, the healing nothingness that explain the sometimes slicing words.
Better still, listen to the sounds where there are no words, no swords…. just the birdsong, the laughter of children, the wind…and watch the movement of those branches because understanding the shapes between is infinitely more rewarding.